Travelers Beware - Are you being overcharged?

I tend to believe the best about people and companies until they give me a reason not to. I may have to rethink that attitude, based on Chris Mercer's recent experience with Hertz. He was overcharged in a manner that just couldn't be a mistake. As Chris shares in his blog post:

Did they hope I wouldn't notice the overcharge? It would certainly have been easy to miss in the rush to get from the car to the gate.

Read the whole story and 'buyer beware' - I'll be looking closely at my receipts from now on.

Reminder: Include Contact Info!

While researching various proposals from vendors this weekend, I was remimded that sometimes in our own business we are too deeply involved to see what it is obvious to outsiders.

If you have a business website - why? Is it not to inform visitors and invite them to contact you, make a purchase, or request more information? So wouldn't you want to make it as easy for them to reach you as possible? Yet the number of websites I visited that lacked easy-to-find contact information was astounding!

They might have a form to fill out that sent an email, but no physical address or phone number. And I tend to suspect any business that won't provide a physical address as being less than legitimate anyway. But why not offer every conceivable way for prospects and potential clients to reach you? Meet their comfort level - be if fax, phone, email or snail mail. And make that information easy to find; I didn't waste time looking past two mouse clicks, and research shows most of your website visitors won't either.

Rosalie's Rant

The cheaters are getting more clever. I received a fax from "Domain Registry Support" with an "Urgent Notice of Domain Extension," with lots of legalese under a heading of "In Accordance with the United States Legal Code," and including a paragraph beginning "Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith."

It was a sales solicitation for another domain name!

Read this stuff carefully. I periodically get calls from clients who have received emails or faxes and are concerned that their domain name or hosting has expired. Don't mistake a sales solicitation for a genuine renewal notice. And watch those, too. A few months ago we were treated to domain name sales pitches couched as renewals. Read your mail, and you can discard most of it. - Rosalie

"Quackspertise"

Thanks to Robert J. Ambrogi for giving me the heads-up in the Legal Blog Watch about this article on 'junk science' and state courts. This past Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by David Bernstein, a professor at George Mason University School of Law and prolific writer on issues surrounding expert evidence.

Bernstein has (with WSJ permission) reprinted the piece, "Rule of Law Quackspertise" at The Volokh Conspiracy in which he encourages state courts to use the tools provided by the federal rulings (such as Daubert) to "ban junk science and quackspertise." He refers to a recent New York case to support his contention that, "despite far-reaching reforms, junk science still plagues American courtrooms."

With several changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence currently in progress, I found it worthwhile to spend a few minutes perusing his article and especially the feedback left by other attorneys in response to this piece.