Lord,
We pray for optimum health, mental clarity and political prosperity for President Barack Obama. We pray that what he lacks in political 'experience' you make up for with supernatural wisdom and power. We also pray that when his enemies come upon him they will stumble and fall; and that your love will fill his heart to the end that 'Your will' will be done through him. We pray mightily for his protection. As we plead the Blood of Jesus over him and his family, we ask you to dispatch legions of angels to protect them from all hurt, harm, danger, and from all accidents and incidents as he is the President of these United States of America .
We thank and praise You for answering our sincere prayers.
In Jesus' Name,
AMEN.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Free Money for College
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS ARE NOT APPLYING FOR SCHOLARSHIPS:
Even if you do not have a college-aged child at home, please share this with someone who does, and to anyone and everyone that comes to mind. Though there are a number of companies and organizations that have donated money for scholarships to African Americans, a great deal of the money is being returned because of a lack of interest or awareness.
Take the initiative to get your children involved. Money shouldn't be returned to donating companies because we fail to apply for it.
Please pass this information on to family members, nieces, nephews, friends with children etc. We must get the word out that money is available. If you are a college student or getting ready to become one, you probably already know how useful additional money can be.
(If clicking on the link doesn't work, then type in the Web site address manually.)
1) BELL LABS FELLOWSHIPS FOR UNDER REPRESENTED MINORITIES http://www.bell-labs.com/fellowships/CRFP/info.html
2) Student Inventors Scholarships http://www.invent.org/collegiate http://www.invent.org/collegiate/
3) Student Video Scholarships http://www.christophers.org/ /vidcon2k.html
4) Coca-Cola Two Year College Scholarships http://www.coca-colascholars.org/programs.html
5) Holocaust Remembrance Scholarships http://holocaust.hklaw.com/
6) Ayn Rand Essay Scholarships http:/ /www.aynrand.org/contests/
7) Brand Essay Competition http://www.instituteforbrandleadership.org/IBLEssayContest-2002Rules.htm
8) Gates Millennlum=2 0Scholarships (major) http://www.gmsp.org/nominationmaterials/read.dbm?ID
9) Xerox Scholarships for Students http://www2.xerox.com/go/xrx/about_xerox/about_xerox_detail.jsp
10) Sports Scholarships and Internships http://www.ncaa.org/about/scholarships.html
11) National Assoc. of Black Journalists Scholarships (NABJ) < /FONT>http://www..nabj.org/html/studentsvcs.html
12) Saul T. Wilson Scholarships (Veterinary) http://www.aphis.usda.gov/mb/mrphr/jobs/stw.html
13) Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund http://www.thurgoodmarshallfund.org/sk_v6.cfm
14) FinAid: The Smart Students Guide to Financial Aid scholarships) http://www.finaid.org/
15) Presidential Freedom Scholarships http://www..nationalservice.org/scholarships/
16) Microsoft Scholarship Program http://www.microsoft.com/college/scholarships/minority.asp
17) WiredScholar Free Scholarship Searchhttp://www.wiredscholar.com/paying/scholarship_search/pay_scholarship_searc
h.jsp
18) Hope Scholarships &Lifetime Credits http://www.ed.gov/inits/hope/
19) William Randolph Hearst Endowed Scholarship for Minority Studentshttp://www.apsanet.org/PS/grants/aspen3.cfm
20) Multiple List of Minority Scholarships http://gehon.ir.miami.edu/financial-assistance/Scholarship/black..html
21) Guaranteed Scholarships http://www.guaranteed-scholarships.com/
22) BOEING scholarships (som e HBCU connects)http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/educationrelations/scholarships
23) Easley National Scholarship Program http://www.naas.org/senior..htm
24) Maryland Artists Scholarships http://www.maef.org/
26) Jacki Tuckfield Memorial Graduate Business Scholarship (for AA students in South Florida )http://www.jackituckfield.org/
27) Historically Black College & University Scholarships http://www.iesabroad.org/info/hbcu.htm
28) Actuarial Scholarships for Minority Studentshttp://www.beanactuary.org/minority/scholarships.htm
29) International Students Scholarships &Aid Help http://www.iefa.org/
30) College Board Scholarship Searchhttp://cbweb10p.collegeboard.org/fundfinder/html/fundfind01.html
31) Burger King Scholarship=2 0Program http://www.bkscholars.csfa.org/
32) Siemens Westinghouse Competition http://www.siemens-foundationorg/
33) GE and LuLac Scholarship Funds http://www.lulac.org/Programs/Scholar.html
34) CollegeNet ' s Scholarship Database http://mach25.collegenet.com/cgi-bin/M25/index
35) Union Sponsored Scholarships and Aid http://www.aflcioorg/scholarships/scholar.htm
36) Federal Scholarships &Aid Gateways 25 Scholarship Gateways from Black Excelhttp://www.blackexcel.org/25scholarships.htm
37) Scholarship &Financial Aid Help http://www.blackexcel.org/fin-sch.htm
38) Scholarship Links (Ed Finance Group) http://www.efg.net/link_scholarship.htm
39) FAFSA On The Web (Your Key Aid Form &Info) http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/
40) Aid &Resources For Re-Entry Students http://www.back2college.com/
41) Scholarships and Fellowships http://www.osc.cuny.edu/sep/links.h tml
42) Scholarships for Study in Paralegal Studies http://www.paralegals.org/Choice/2000west.htm
43) HBCU Packard Sit Abroad Scholarships (for study around the world)http://www.sit.edu/studyabroad/packard_nomination.html
44) Scholarship and Fellowship Opportunities http://ccmi.uchicago.edu/schl1.html
45) INROADS internships http://www.inroads.org/
46) ACT-SO bEURoeOlympics of the Mind 'A Scholarships'ttp://www.naacp.org/work/actso/act-so.shtml
47) Black Alliance for Educational Options Scholarships'ttp://www.baeo.org/options/privatelyfinanced.jsp
48) ScienceNet Scholarship Listing'ttp://www.sciencenet.emory.edu/undergrad/scholarships.html
49) Graduate Fellowships For Minorities Nationwide'ttp://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Student/GRFN/list.phtml?category=MINORITIES
50) RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS AT OXFORD 'ttp://www.rhodesscholar.org /info.html
51) The Roothbert Scholarship Fund 'ttp://www.roothbertfund.org/schol
Even if you do not have a college-aged child at home, please share this with someone who does, and to anyone and everyone that comes to mind. Though there are a number of companies and organizations that have donated money for scholarships to African Americans, a great deal of the money is being returned because of a lack of interest or awareness.
Take the initiative to get your children involved. Money shouldn't be returned to donating companies because we fail to apply for it.
Please pass this information on to family members, nieces, nephews, friends with children etc. We must get the word out that money is available. If you are a college student or getting ready to become one, you probably already know how useful additional money can be.
(If clicking on the link doesn't work, then type in the Web site address manually.)
1) BELL LABS FELLOWSHIPS FOR UNDER REPRESENTED MINORITIES http://www.bell-labs.com/fellowships/CRFP/info.html
2) Student Inventors Scholarships http://www.invent.org/collegiate http://www.invent.org/collegiate/
3) Student Video Scholarships http://www.christophers.org/ /vidcon2k.html
4) Coca-Cola Two Year College Scholarships http://www.coca-colascholars.org/programs.html
5) Holocaust Remembrance Scholarships http://holocaust.hklaw.com/
6) Ayn Rand Essay Scholarships http:/ /www.aynrand.org/contests/
7) Brand Essay Competition http://www.instituteforbrandleadership.org/IBLEssayContest-2002Rules.htm
8) Gates Millennlum=2 0Scholarships (major) http://www.gmsp.org/nominationmaterials/read.dbm?ID
9) Xerox Scholarships for Students http://www2.xerox.com/go/xrx/about_xerox/about_xerox_detail.jsp
10) Sports Scholarships and Internships http://www.ncaa.org/about/scholarships.html
11) National Assoc. of Black Journalists Scholarships (NABJ) < /FONT>http://www..nabj.org/html/studentsvcs.html
12) Saul T. Wilson Scholarships (Veterinary) http://www.aphis.usda.gov/mb/mrphr/jobs/stw.html
13) Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund http://www.thurgoodmarshallfund.org/sk_v6.cfm
14) FinAid: The Smart Students Guide to Financial Aid scholarships) http://www.finaid.org/
15) Presidential Freedom Scholarships http://www..nationalservice.org/scholarships/
16) Microsoft Scholarship Program http://www.microsoft.com/college/scholarships/minority.asp
17) WiredScholar Free Scholarship Searchhttp://www.wiredscholar.com/paying/scholarship_search/pay_scholarship_searc
h.jsp
18) Hope Scholarships &Lifetime Credits http://www.ed.gov/inits/hope/
19) William Randolph Hearst Endowed Scholarship for Minority Studentshttp://www.apsanet.org/PS/grants/aspen3.cfm
20) Multiple List of Minority Scholarships http://gehon.ir.miami.edu/financial-assistance/Scholarship/black..html
21) Guaranteed Scholarships http://www.guaranteed-scholarships.com/
22) BOEING scholarships (som e HBCU connects)http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/educationrelations/scholarships
23) Easley National Scholarship Program http://www.naas.org/senior..htm
24) Maryland Artists Scholarships http://www.maef.org/
26) Jacki Tuckfield Memorial Graduate Business Scholarship (for AA students in South Florida )http://www.jackituckfield.org/
27) Historically Black College & University Scholarships http://www.iesabroad.org/info/hbcu.htm
28) Actuarial Scholarships for Minority Studentshttp://www.beanactuary.org/minority/scholarships.htm
29) International Students Scholarships &Aid Help http://www.iefa.org/
30) College Board Scholarship Searchhttp://cbweb10p.collegeboard.org/fundfinder/html/fundfind01.html
31) Burger King Scholarship=2 0Program http://www.bkscholars.csfa.org/
32) Siemens Westinghouse Competition http://www.siemens-foundationorg/
33) GE and LuLac Scholarship Funds http://www.lulac.org/Programs/Scholar.html
34) CollegeNet ' s Scholarship Database http://mach25.collegenet.com/cgi-bin/M25/index
35) Union Sponsored Scholarships and Aid http://www.aflcioorg/scholarships/scholar.htm
36) Federal Scholarships &Aid Gateways 25 Scholarship Gateways from Black Excelhttp://www.blackexcel.org/25scholarships.htm
37) Scholarship &Financial Aid Help http://www.blackexcel.org/fin-sch.htm
38) Scholarship Links (Ed Finance Group) http://www.efg.net/link_scholarship.htm
39) FAFSA On The Web (Your Key Aid Form &Info) http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/
40) Aid &Resources For Re-Entry Students http://www.back2college.com/
41) Scholarships and Fellowships http://www.osc.cuny.edu/sep/links.h tml
42) Scholarships for Study in Paralegal Studies http://www.paralegals.org/Choice/2000west.htm
43) HBCU Packard Sit Abroad Scholarships (for study around the world)http://www.sit.edu/studyabroad/packard_nomination.html
44) Scholarship and Fellowship Opportunities http://ccmi.uchicago.edu/schl1.html
45) INROADS internships http://www.inroads.org/
46) ACT-SO bEURoeOlympics of the Mind 'A Scholarships'ttp://www.naacp.org/work/actso/act-so.shtml
47) Black Alliance for Educational Options Scholarships'ttp://www.baeo.org/options/privatelyfinanced.jsp
48) ScienceNet Scholarship Listing'ttp://www.sciencenet.emory.edu/undergrad/scholarships.html
49) Graduate Fellowships For Minorities Nationwide'ttp://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Student/GRFN/list.phtml?category=MINORITIES
50) RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS AT OXFORD 'ttp://www.rhodesscholar.org /info.html
51) The Roothbert Scholarship Fund 'ttp://www.roothbertfund.org/schol
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Day the President Turned Black (But has he turned back?)
The Day the President Turned Black
(But has he turned back?)
By Greg Palast Wednesday July 29, 2009
for The Huffington Post
For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!
Last week, when his buddy "Skip" Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America's conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.
Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.
I'm reminded that it was not so long ago that we watched the vicious gang-beating by Los Angeles cops of a defenseless, handcuffed, Rodney King, an African-American. King's beating was unusual only in that it was caught on videotape.
Yeah, I know: we've come a hell of a long way. Obama won, Jessie cried, Beyoncé has her own line of perfume and Tiger Woods plays where 30 years ago he couldn't eat lunch.
Good on them.
But what about Robert Pratt, Mr. President?
Pratt, a United Auto Workers member, has five kids and a mortgage payment of $1,100 a month on a house in Detroit worth no more than $40,000. The payment's astronomical because he pays 11% on his mortgage balance, double the national average interest rate. Now, on those crazy terms, he's sure to lose his house.
How did that happen? Pratt, whose story we've been tracking, was "steered" into a sub-prime loan by Countrywide Financial. "Steering" is the polite term for forcing folk into crappy loan terms. And not just any folk: Black folk, like Pratt. Over 60% of African-American mortgage applicants were (and ARE) steered into "sub-prime" predatory loans.
According to exhaustive studies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), African Americans are 250% more likely to get a loan with an "exploding interest" clause than white borrowers - and notably, the higher the income and the better the credit rating of a Black borrower, the more likely the discrimination.
As an economist, I can tell you it's not a stretch to say that Obama's failure to deal with endemic racism in the finance system is killing off hope of the nation's economic recovery. The "exploding rate" attack centered on Black and Hispanic communities has, according to the CLR, caused 40.2 million homes to lose value due to their proximity to foreclosed properties.
Yet, not a peep from the Obama Administration about ending this Ku Klux lending practice which has laid waste Black neighborhoods and taken a hunk of White America's housing values with it.
Instead, Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is the honored guest of the Board of Directors of JP Morgan, owner of one of the most outrageous of the financial predators, Washington Mutual. Morgan/WaMu, with its racially-poisoned mortgage trickery, makes the Cambridge Police Department look like the NAACP.
(Indeed, Emanuel's host JP Morgan was sued last week by the NAACP for "systematic, institutionalized racism in making home mortgage loans.")
The cold truth is, financial attacks on the Black community continue as freely under Obama as under Bush, despite Obama's power to halt it instantly by banning loan-sharking as a condition of continued bail-outs for these banks. Obama has directed the FDIC to guarantee JP Morgan loans, saving the bank $3.1 billion this year. Obama has directed the FDIC to guarantee Mr. Pratt, uh, "hope."
And what about Thomas Johnson, Mr. President?
Johnson's a minister in Florida who lost his vote in 2000, alongside at least 94,000 others falsely accused of being felons without the right to vote. Most of the innocents accused and abused were Black, the minister included. I know, because I saw those state records with the carefully recorded "BLA" next to the voters' names.
I had an editor on the story, won't say his name because he was so typical, who asked me why Johnson, an African-American, didn't pound the table and DEMAND his ballot. Johnson's no Harvard professor in Boston with the President's phone number on his speed dial.
My extremely white editor, a Yale graduate, sitting in San Francisco, could not imagine what would happen if a dark-skinned Rev. Johnson had started making a scene in Alachua County, in the Deep Deep South. The Reverend was smart not to pull a "Skippy Gates" and lip-off at authority: just a couple months ago, Alachua cops 'Tased' an angry, but unarmed, Black man, then shot him dead with seven bullets.
Johnson's vote loss, you might say, was "so 2000." This is post-racial 2009. Bullshit. In last year's election, Florida went right back into the racially biased block-and-purge of Black voters, barring thousands from the ballot through new ID laws that would have made Jim Crow segregationists of the Fifties proud. (See the investigative report, "Block the Vote," by myself and Bobby Kennedy, from the October 2008 Rolling Stone).
Yet, the Obama Administration appears quite squeamish about taking down the nouvelle ballot-box Bull Connors.
Venom
What I'm saying is that the venom of structural racism in America continues to sicken us all, in our economy, in our voting stations, in our schools (don't get me started), our health care system, our ... well, you name it.
Yes, I joined the Hope Parade and voted for Obama, expecting just this one change: a direct attack on the remaining areas of official sanction of racist policies and practices. I'm still waiting. It was quite inspiring, last Thursday, to the see a Black man appear, if momentarily, behind the Presidential seal. Unfortunately, Obama's swift demand for equal justice under the law was provoked only when the whip came down on someone, like himself, whose professional and class status had, they presumed, made them exempt from the daily insults and assaults visited on their less privileged brothers.
So much was made of Gates' Harvard post that the issue seemed to be It's not right to cuff a dark-skinned man who's a HARVARD PROFESSOR." The race-neutral rules of class privilege had been violated.
What's missing in America - and in the Oval Office - is any hint of outrage at the endemic, systemic cruelties visited on Black Americans, like Pratt and Johnson, who lack a key to the Harvard Alumni Club.
******
Greg Palast, an expert in finance and regulation, is the author of Armed Madhouse: Strange Tales and Sordid Secrets of a White House Gone Wild. His investigative reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now were recently released as a film on DVD: Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon, on the Trail of the Financial Marauders.
(But has he turned back?)
By Greg Palast Wednesday July 29, 2009
for The Huffington Post
For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!
Last week, when his buddy "Skip" Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America's conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.
Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.
I'm reminded that it was not so long ago that we watched the vicious gang-beating by Los Angeles cops of a defenseless, handcuffed, Rodney King, an African-American. King's beating was unusual only in that it was caught on videotape.
Yeah, I know: we've come a hell of a long way. Obama won, Jessie cried, Beyoncé has her own line of perfume and Tiger Woods plays where 30 years ago he couldn't eat lunch.
Good on them.
But what about Robert Pratt, Mr. President?
Pratt, a United Auto Workers member, has five kids and a mortgage payment of $1,100 a month on a house in Detroit worth no more than $40,000. The payment's astronomical because he pays 11% on his mortgage balance, double the national average interest rate. Now, on those crazy terms, he's sure to lose his house.
How did that happen? Pratt, whose story we've been tracking, was "steered" into a sub-prime loan by Countrywide Financial. "Steering" is the polite term for forcing folk into crappy loan terms. And not just any folk: Black folk, like Pratt. Over 60% of African-American mortgage applicants were (and ARE) steered into "sub-prime" predatory loans.
According to exhaustive studies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), African Americans are 250% more likely to get a loan with an "exploding interest" clause than white borrowers - and notably, the higher the income and the better the credit rating of a Black borrower, the more likely the discrimination.
As an economist, I can tell you it's not a stretch to say that Obama's failure to deal with endemic racism in the finance system is killing off hope of the nation's economic recovery. The "exploding rate" attack centered on Black and Hispanic communities has, according to the CLR, caused 40.2 million homes to lose value due to their proximity to foreclosed properties.
Yet, not a peep from the Obama Administration about ending this Ku Klux lending practice which has laid waste Black neighborhoods and taken a hunk of White America's housing values with it.
Instead, Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is the honored guest of the Board of Directors of JP Morgan, owner of one of the most outrageous of the financial predators, Washington Mutual. Morgan/WaMu, with its racially-poisoned mortgage trickery, makes the Cambridge Police Department look like the NAACP.
(Indeed, Emanuel's host JP Morgan was sued last week by the NAACP for "systematic, institutionalized racism in making home mortgage loans.")
The cold truth is, financial attacks on the Black community continue as freely under Obama as under Bush, despite Obama's power to halt it instantly by banning loan-sharking as a condition of continued bail-outs for these banks. Obama has directed the FDIC to guarantee JP Morgan loans, saving the bank $3.1 billion this year. Obama has directed the FDIC to guarantee Mr. Pratt, uh, "hope."
And what about Thomas Johnson, Mr. President?
Johnson's a minister in Florida who lost his vote in 2000, alongside at least 94,000 others falsely accused of being felons without the right to vote. Most of the innocents accused and abused were Black, the minister included. I know, because I saw those state records with the carefully recorded "BLA" next to the voters' names.
I had an editor on the story, won't say his name because he was so typical, who asked me why Johnson, an African-American, didn't pound the table and DEMAND his ballot. Johnson's no Harvard professor in Boston with the President's phone number on his speed dial.
My extremely white editor, a Yale graduate, sitting in San Francisco, could not imagine what would happen if a dark-skinned Rev. Johnson had started making a scene in Alachua County, in the Deep Deep South. The Reverend was smart not to pull a "Skippy Gates" and lip-off at authority: just a couple months ago, Alachua cops 'Tased' an angry, but unarmed, Black man, then shot him dead with seven bullets.
Johnson's vote loss, you might say, was "so 2000." This is post-racial 2009. Bullshit. In last year's election, Florida went right back into the racially biased block-and-purge of Black voters, barring thousands from the ballot through new ID laws that would have made Jim Crow segregationists of the Fifties proud. (See the investigative report, "Block the Vote," by myself and Bobby Kennedy, from the October 2008 Rolling Stone).
Yet, the Obama Administration appears quite squeamish about taking down the nouvelle ballot-box Bull Connors.
Venom
What I'm saying is that the venom of structural racism in America continues to sicken us all, in our economy, in our voting stations, in our schools (don't get me started), our health care system, our ... well, you name it.
Yes, I joined the Hope Parade and voted for Obama, expecting just this one change: a direct attack on the remaining areas of official sanction of racist policies and practices. I'm still waiting. It was quite inspiring, last Thursday, to the see a Black man appear, if momentarily, behind the Presidential seal. Unfortunately, Obama's swift demand for equal justice under the law was provoked only when the whip came down on someone, like himself, whose professional and class status had, they presumed, made them exempt from the daily insults and assaults visited on their less privileged brothers.
So much was made of Gates' Harvard post that the issue seemed to be It's not right to cuff a dark-skinned man who's a HARVARD PROFESSOR." The race-neutral rules of class privilege had been violated.
What's missing in America - and in the Oval Office - is any hint of outrage at the endemic, systemic cruelties visited on Black Americans, like Pratt and Johnson, who lack a key to the Harvard Alumni Club.
******
Greg Palast, an expert in finance and regulation, is the author of Armed Madhouse: Strange Tales and Sordid Secrets of a White House Gone Wild. His investigative reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now were recently released as a film on DVD: Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon, on the Trail of the Financial Marauders.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Your Business is in Danger!
Hello. I flew your airline from NYC to Cleveland recently, and it was a very decent flight that took off on time and landed early. I had no complaints.
On my return trip, I arrived at the airport a little early and realized when I reached the concourse that a flight was due to leave in 20 minutes or so. I think you know where this is headed.
I decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if I might take the ealier flight instead of waiting another hour and a half for my plane. Upon reaching the gate for the departing flight, I saw that they had just started boarding Elite Access; so I approached an agent. After waiting a few moments, I inquired about availability on the flight and if I might be able to depart earlier.
The flight was half empty and the agent checked my ticket and then quoted me a "change fee" of one hundred and fifty dollars. Now I fly quite often and asked her what the fee would be to fly standby. Again she consulted her screen and quoted me a fifty dollar fee. Aha!!! Well that's a little better.
I decided to wait for my flight in order to warn you that your business is in danger. Do you know why? If you're a savvy business person, I'm sure you do.
This employee just passed up the chance to make an avid fan, who's a frequent flyer and small business owner, in order to make a quick buck.
I'm already thinking that I'll submit this letter, without your business being named, to several publications as a warning to other struggling businesses.
If this young lady would have quoted me the first price and then said something to the effect that she would check to see what the price would be for standby; I would have probably done just that. If she would have let me fly on the half empty flight without a charge seeing that I already had a paid ticket and the flight was half empty, you would have earned a fan who would tell everyone about the experience. Of course exactly the opposite will now come to pass.
How can struggling companies guarantee that their doors will stay open in hard economic times? How do you make sure that a majority of your customers pass along your information in a positive light almost certainly guaranteeing you more business? By doing something special for each and every person at every available opportunity.
From my standpoint and opinion, it seems that your company was just attempting to turn a quick buck with no concern for my comfort or for my future business. The flight was not full. I had a paid ticket. The flight had barely started boarding. It would cost the airline nothing to take on one extra passenger. BUT the goodwill it would have garnered would have been worth...priceless.
As things stand, I'll now think twice before booking my flight with your airline and it's partners. Of course I will also go out of my way to recommend another airline to my partners and contemporaries.
I just wanted to warn you. Your business is in danger.
On my return trip, I arrived at the airport a little early and realized when I reached the concourse that a flight was due to leave in 20 minutes or so. I think you know where this is headed.
I decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if I might take the ealier flight instead of waiting another hour and a half for my plane. Upon reaching the gate for the departing flight, I saw that they had just started boarding Elite Access; so I approached an agent. After waiting a few moments, I inquired about availability on the flight and if I might be able to depart earlier.
The flight was half empty and the agent checked my ticket and then quoted me a "change fee" of one hundred and fifty dollars. Now I fly quite often and asked her what the fee would be to fly standby. Again she consulted her screen and quoted me a fifty dollar fee. Aha!!! Well that's a little better.
I decided to wait for my flight in order to warn you that your business is in danger. Do you know why? If you're a savvy business person, I'm sure you do.
This employee just passed up the chance to make an avid fan, who's a frequent flyer and small business owner, in order to make a quick buck.
I'm already thinking that I'll submit this letter, without your business being named, to several publications as a warning to other struggling businesses.
If this young lady would have quoted me the first price and then said something to the effect that she would check to see what the price would be for standby; I would have probably done just that. If she would have let me fly on the half empty flight without a charge seeing that I already had a paid ticket and the flight was half empty, you would have earned a fan who would tell everyone about the experience. Of course exactly the opposite will now come to pass.
How can struggling companies guarantee that their doors will stay open in hard economic times? How do you make sure that a majority of your customers pass along your information in a positive light almost certainly guaranteeing you more business? By doing something special for each and every person at every available opportunity.
From my standpoint and opinion, it seems that your company was just attempting to turn a quick buck with no concern for my comfort or for my future business. The flight was not full. I had a paid ticket. The flight had barely started boarding. It would cost the airline nothing to take on one extra passenger. BUT the goodwill it would have garnered would have been worth...priceless.
As things stand, I'll now think twice before booking my flight with your airline and it's partners. Of course I will also go out of my way to recommend another airline to my partners and contemporaries.
I just wanted to warn you. Your business is in danger.
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