Tag Archives: Rhonda Abrams

About 3826 days ago Search Engine Optimization

Booking Travel on the Internet

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series on making travel reservations on the Internet. This week: Tricks and Tips. Next week: Rhonda reviews the leading online services. When a company gives you truly bad service, wouldn’t you like to tell the world? I recently received such bad treatment from an on-line travel service that I decided to use this as an opportunity to discuss the ups and downs of booking travel on the Internet. This week I’ll provide general on-line booking tips and tricks. In my next column, I’ll review the leading on-line travel services. I travel a lot on business. I’ve used – or checked — all the major travel sites: the airlines’ Web sites, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire, etc. Overall, I’ve been pretty satisfied. Most people judge an on-line travel service by: availability of low fares ease of use overall look-and-feel. Remember one other critical factor: customer service. Sooner or later, you’ll have a problem — flights cancelled, trips rescheduled. You’re going to have to deal with the travel service rather than the airline. If they don’t offer adequate support, you’ll have the kind of problem I had with Cheaptickets.com, owned by Trip Network, which also owns Trip.com. The morning after I booked a flight I realized I had made a mistake on the time. I immediately called Cheaptickets, which announces they’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A salesperson told me only customer service could deal with a ticket once booked. I waited on hold for 47 minutes and still couldn’t reach anyone in customer service. Finally I sent an E-mail to the E-mail address provided. I called again the next day. Once again, I couldn’t reach customer service. Once again, I spoke to a salesperson who couldn’t help me. Finally, the third day, I reached a customer service supervisor, who said no one could help me. Why? Because I failed to contact them within 48 hours of booking! I explained I’d spent two days trying to reach them. I could pay for the ticket or challenge the charge with my credit card company! Moreover, this supervisor told me they have more than 2000 E-mails backed up and a typical time on hold is between 20 to 40 minutes. When I spoke with Kate Sullivan, Manager of Corporate Communications for Trip Network, she was apologetic. “There was no excuse for this kind of treatment. It’s substandard to the kind of customer service we try to provide?The volume we’re experiencing is very unusual for this time of year.” However, Cheaptickets was the exception. I’ve used many travel services successfully. Whatever online site you use, here are a few tips and tricks: READ carefully: Some sites automatically include neighboring airports (e.g., Newark for New York, Baltimore for Washington, DC). Make certain you’re going where you want, when you want. Click around: No one site seems to consistently offer the best fare. Some sites have arrangements with travel consolidators or other discounters. Try other routes: Using a nearby airport or breaking one long trip into two shorter ones, may be much cheaper. For instance, booking one roundtrip flight from San Francisco to San Juan, Puerto Rico (via New York) was hundreds of dollars more expensive than booking two separate flights (SFO-JFK) and (JFK-San Juan) though I was on the same flights! Check the”"vacation packages”: On Expedia, I once booked a flight, hotel, and car rental to Houston cheaper than the flight alone. Get a seat: I can usually get a good seat when I book on the American Airlines site. When I book through a third-party site, I may not get a seat assignment at all. You can call the airline for a seat assignment no matter what service you use. Watch out for nasty surprises: United Airlines won’t allow seat upgrades on some discount Web fares. Last minute limits: Some sites won’t book flights within one to five days of travel. You can often find last minute fares cheapest on the airlines’ own sites. Check non-travel sites: As a Costco member, I can often get cheaper car rentals at Costco.com than on a travel Web site. When you find a great fare, grab it! It may be gone next time you check. Finally, be patient, especially on a dial-up connection. This all takes a long time. I sure miss my old travel agent! Copyright Rhonda Abrams, 2002 Rhonda Abrams writes the nation’s most widely-read small business column and is the author of The Successful Business Plan and The Successful Business Organizer. To receive Rhonda’s free business tips, register at www.RhondaOnline.com.

About 4221 days ago Setting Up a Website

Are the New Internet Names Right for You?

Are you frustrated trying to find just the right name for your Web site? Is every .com name you’ ve wanted already taken? You’ ve now got two new options: .info and .biz. But should you use them? A bit of background: The Internet naming system is based on Top Level Domains (TLDs), which are indicated by suffixes. These are somewhat like area codes for phone numbers, only they’ re meant to indicate the type of Web site. The first ones were .com (commercial), .org (organization), .net (network), .edu (education), .gov (government), and .mil (military). Because the Internet was originally designed to enable military and government communication systems to survive a nuclear attack — not as the place to conduct everyday business — no one ever imagined we’ d run out of .com names. But just as there’ s been a need for many more area codes, the Internet has needed additional suffixes. To respond to this need, the Internet’ s governing body authorized additional top level domains. Two of these are now available: .info – for any purpose .biz – to indicate the site is a business. Coming soon are two others: .name – to be used for an individual’ s Web site. All sites will follow a required pattern of first name.lastname.name. In other words, my personal site would be rhonda.abrams.name. .pro for specific professions. The first three will be for accountants – cpa.pro, attorneys – law.pro, and doctors – med.pro. Just because these new suffixes are now available, it doesn’ t mean you should rush out and get one. After all, it will take time before customers or other users become familiar with these new extensions. What won’ t you be able to find with these new top level domains? Very popular names: If you thought you missed out on your chance to get flowers.com or shop.com, you’ ve also missed out on your opportunity to get flowers.biz or shop.biz. These types of generic names were preregistered by those who already have highly-valuable Web sites and want to protect them or by cybersquatters who hope they’ ll be able to sell them. Trademarked names: Don’ t think you’ re going to be able to own mcdonalds.biz or nike.info. Even if you somehow manage to register a trademarked name, unless you can show a legitimate claim for such a domain, the trademark holder can keep you from using it. What are these new suffixes good for? A straightforward but uncommon name: If you want a name that was already taken as a .com site, you may be able to find it with a .biz or .info suffix. While you’ re not going to secure plumbing.biz, you might get jacksplumbing.biz or jacksplumbing.info. A name you’ ll use with only a few people: The biggest drawback to these new suffixes is getting people to remember to use them. If you can easily teach people your correct address, you shouldn’ t have a problem. A name a competitor might use: If you’ re afraid your competitor might use the .biz or .info variation of your company’ s Internet address, you might want to snap it up first. A name you’ ve got a lot of money to promote: Hey, if you’ ve got a huge advertising budget, you can get customers to remember just about anything. The fact that the suffix is new and different might even be part of your marketing strategy. If you’ re trying to decide whether or not to register a new name, here’ s my advice: if you can find a reasonable .com name, use it. Customers are used to .com addresses. if you’ ve got a few extra dollars, go ahead and register a .biz or .info name. Verisign is running a special — $45 for two years registration — on these new suffixes. Only time will tell whether we’ ll all get used to checking domain suffixes, just the way we do an area code. Until then, many people may be confused by the new ones. Since I have millions of readers, if I said my web address was www.Rhonda.biz, some people would probably mistakenly type in the .com suffix and find a graphic artist in Phoenix. Nevertheless, I’ ve registered that name anyway — just in case. In the meantime, I plan to keep using www.RhondaWorks.com. ©Copyright Rhonda Abrams, 2001 Rhonda Abrams writes the nation’ s most widely-read small business column and is the author of ” The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies” and ” Wear Clean Underwear: Business Wisdom from Mom.” Her newest book, ” The Successful Business Organizer” has just been released. Register for free business tips from Rhonda at www.RhondaWorks.com

About 4282 days ago Computer Security

Make Your Records Safe Now

In the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy, state, federal, and city agencies are assisting affected businesses to recover as best they can. Most assistance comes in the form of long-term, low-interest loans. Remember, these are loans, not grants. As with any loans, business owners still have to fill out applications and be able to qualify. But this time, they face another huge problem – access to their records and data. Most of the large corporations in the affected area are prepared. In fact, the Y2K scare may have turned out to be a blessing. Big companies, afraid of having their systems disrupted by the Y2K bug, installed redundant systems, contingency plans, and off-site backup programs. But small businesses will be a different story. Jim King, Director of the New York State Small Business Development Center, estimates that 10-30% of small businesses will have lost ALL records. I suspect the number will be even higher, as I’ ve rarely seen a small business that keeps copies of their data in an off-site location. At most, they may have a copy of their tax returns on file with their accountant. The first job of SBDC and Small Business Administration counselors will be to help businesses recreate their records. So it’ s time to develop your own disaster prevention plan. I’ ve put a copy of the ” Contingency Plan” worksheet from my book, The Successful Business Organizer, on my Web site, www.RhondaWorks.com. You can find other crisis prevention information there also — select ” Help Me Rhonda,” then ” Crisis Center”. For years, I recommended businesses to back up data at least once a week and store copies off-site at a distance of a mile or more (in case of earthquakes, fires, etc.) But that’ s not easy to remember. So now I’ m URGING you to set up an online backup system, and you won’ t have to remember anything. The good news is this is easy and inexpensive. In the last few years, a number of companies have started to provide online, automatic data backup. Looking at the various options, I settled on the @backup service from SkyDesk, www.backup.com. The process is quite simple. You merely download the program from the company’ s Web site, select which of your files or folders to back up, and choose a time to have the backups performed. The first backup may take a while, but after that, the program only updates files you’ ve changed since the last backup, so it may only take a few minutes a day. This can be done at night if you leave your computers on or during the day. It works with either dial-up modems or high-speed connections (services for AOL and MSN members are coming out in the next few weeks). The service automatically connects to you: once you set it up, it happens without you thinking about it. Your data is encrypted so even SkyDesk personnel don’ t have access to it, and they maintain backup and redundant systems, so even if something happened to their corporate headquarters, your data would be safe. The @backup program was specifically designed for small businesses and home-office users. According to Mike Joseph, SkyDesk’ s executive vice president of marketing, 70% of their customers are companies with fewer than 25 employees. Prices vary according to how much data storage space you’ ll need. Joseph says their average customer uses 70 MB of storage space. Here are costs from a few of the online backup services: @backup. 30-day free trial; 50 MB for $49.95 annually; 500 MB for $299 annually ibackup.com. 50 MB for $36 annually; 500 MB for $120 annually Data Protection Services. Aimed at bigger companies, they start at 1GB for $49.95 month. Keep in mind that you don’ t need to do online backups of your software programs, only your data. Programs are easily replaced – your own records aren’ t! Back up every bit of precious information: customer lists, all your accounts, phone numbers, etc. Terrorist attacks may not be easy to prevent and natural disasters will inevitably occur. But saving your data is easy and inexpensive. At least, losing your records is one disaster you can avert. Copyright Rhonda Abrams, 2001 Rhonda Abrams writes the nation’ s most widely-read small-business column and is the author of The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies and The Successful Business Organizer. For free business tips from Rhonda, register at www.RhondaWorks.com.