THE GREAT AMAZON ASSOCIATES SWINDLE

  

Today I received an email telling me that various parts of my agreement between Amazon and myself have changed.

I have a few links on websites to books that I have read and think others might like. Just makes for a slightly better, more interactive experience etc

For this I would receive a small (and it really is small) % of the selling price of the book. This works well. I've probably made about £50-£100 in total since 1998 when I first used this system. It's not a business empire!

But today's slight amendments to their operating agreement include this little gem hidden away in the legal speak and small type..

"If you have not earned any advertising fees in the 3 years prior to any given calendar month, then on the first day of that calendar month we may charge you an account maintenance fee that will be deducted from your unpaid accrued advertising fees. That account maintenance fee will be (i) £10 if your advertising fees were earned from Qualifying Purchases occurring on the Amazon UK Site or €10 if your advertising fees were earned from Qualifying Purchases occurring on each of the Amazon DE Site, Amazon FR Site or Amazon IT Site; and (ii) the amount of unpaid accrued advertising fees in your account. We may also in this case close your account and terminate this agreement."

What?!

So, if your account isn't used for a while and you decide to go back in and help Amazon make more sales you'd better make sure you have earned something from the referral system in the past 3 years.

If not, the way I read it, your referral income better be more than £25 in total (they hold fees until they reach this limit to pay direct your bank). If it falls under £25 and you have not earned any fees on your account for 3 years then they will charge you £10 off your fees earned (the text in green) PLUS take all your fees earned to date (the sky blue text).  Then they say they 'may' - presumably if they are feeling particularly miserly that day -close your account and terminate the agreement.

Nice one Amazon.

I've been sat here thinking I'm doing you a favour all the time and now you're about to kick me in the face and chuck me off the programme.

Not before I've terminated 'my' agreement with you you're not.

Suffice to say, my websites won't feature book recommendations with links to Amazon on them any longer. Amazon should remember one thing. There are other booksellers on the web. And some of the household web names of today didn't exist only a few years ago.

Good business strategy Amazon.

 

PISSED UP IN THE RAIN...

 

  
Tell me I'm not dreaming this one up.  A recent contract notice system threw the following up as a new research project that is currently being let in the UK..

Research into the Needs of Street Drinkers in [..the specified location] ...to ascertain the need for, and recommendations for delivery of, a managed place or places where street drinkers may drink alcohol. Estimated contract start date: 01/04/2010. Estimated contract end date: 30/06/2010 Contract Period: 3 (months)....

I did a bit of digging and found out the details.  The work is being let by a regional charity in the north of England, already providing welcome shelters for the homeless and 'soup kitchen' style support.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for that sort of service and the potential that then exists to talk with these people and start them on their way to overcoming some of their problems..  But there's a big leap between helping people in general and allowing them to drink on your premises when it's too cold or wet for them outside??

A quick goggle at google finds this too:
Wet Day Centres for Street Drinkers: A Research Report and Manual

So, next time you are luxuriating in the warm and cosy confines of your local pub raise a glass to 'Street Drinkers', a new disadvantaged group in society that the New Labour machine wants to help...  Where will it end?

Is this yet more evidence of the UK's public sector money (i.e. our tax take) being wasted on wasters?  Make your own mind up.  Mine already is.

Just to rub insult into the waste of money, here's a pic of a sleepy drunk guy taken at around 11:00 am one Saturday last year in a north of England town that shall remain unnamed - sat on a bench in front of a water feature / public art sculpture (call it what you will - you bought it after all) that was part of the town's regeneration effort.  Effort being a very fitting description.  Clearly didn't make much of an impression on him or change his outlook on life in any substantial way?

I'll be posting more on the subject of public funded art projects soon.
However, whilst bobbing around the web researching this post I did find this little gem worth a link and click - Leo Leigh film love story

RECESSION WATCH..

My daily newsdrop email today included this..

UK recession is officially over

The recession is officially over, according to figures published this morning which showed that the UK economy grew by 0.1% in the last three months of 2009.

Two words (I promise!)

My arse.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

I am an economist, just like the Chancellor and now Prime Minister Gordon Brown (though thankfully a very different flavoured one than him)..

Today's news on the BBC website carries the story that Mr Brown has promised the UK economy will not only recover but will return to growth in 2010..

Who does he think he is? That kind of talk gets economists and economic theory a bad name. We do forecast variables from time to time, my favourites being population numbers, but are never as blasé as to think we can know what will happen in the future. Maybe Mr Brown has had a visit from Marty McFly or a replicant from the future? Maybe, as is more likely, he's just in denial of reality.

Whatever Mr Brown.

What I know for certain is that we wouldn't be in our current situation and would certainly have been better off if you and yours hadn't handed the banks money on a plate just to get your ugly mugs in with the electorate (which didn't work anyway). The bankers must have laughed their socks off when they got away with that kind of treatment last year. Brown & a bunch of former teachers and union reps meddling in international financial markets like they were some sort of financial guru's. I know plenty of other people with strong views about life in the City that have never been within a mile of the Square Mile (in my defence at least I used to work there but I still exercise caution when criticising traders lifestyles and pay rates)..

Yesterday's FT Weekend carried an interview with George Soros, someone I trust to know what is going on in the world of finance a lot more than some baggy suited, overweight Scottish geek. This is someone that landed in the US post-war with less than $5 to his name and is now one of the richest men on the planet. All through gaining a deep psychological understanding of how humans and therefore groups of humans (i.e. markets) work.

So, in closing I am happy to quote 'The Man':

Soros characterises Wall Street profits as 'gifts' from the state
"those [bank] earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers, these are gifts , hidden gifts, from the government, so I don't think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses. There's a resentment which I think is justified."

Soros is giving a series of lectures in Budapest next week in which he is developing these thoughts. I may well step on a plane if I could only get a ticket!

YOU THINK WE GOT IT BAD?

GOING UP! America's Gross National Debt:

...and meanwhile...

Green Energy

CREDIT STARVATION?

A prominent economic adviser has stated recently, "Credit starvation is the biggest problem facing the UK economy and increasing the supply of central bank money via purchases of government securities should help to loosen these restrictions and boost the supply of money and credit."

Polko looks at this from another angle..

Greed and continued access to hard sell/low cost credit by the many has been the biggest problem facing the UK economy for some time now.

As I write this, the Bank of England is expected to drop interest rates again in the next 10 minutes or so, backed by a new form of 'quantiative easing' - increasing the money supply by any other name. Only it's not so new a concept. Take a look in the history books and see the problems that arose in 1797 in the UK when the money supply was expanded by the setting up of a string of new banks all over the country backed by the Bank of England gradually increasing the issue of paper notes. For those not bothered to read up on the period, it was not a pretty picture for the ordinary man who faced prices rising by 7 times their value in the decade before.

The particular strain of 'easing' the Bank of England has been discussing in the last month or so - not just flooding more money into the system but using it to buy up government assets - was also tried in Japan in the early 90s. Now't much happened to help the Japanese economy. Little evidence it will help now then?

I may just have the answer - I think I'll go out and buy an over-priced new car on a 35 year 0% APR loan? Gotta do my bit for the UK economy you know. So long as it's made or at least the spares are made in the UK of course!

Meanwhile, in another life, Polko is busy stashing all he can to exit this island before the sea swells and the land crumbles under the weght of all the prole kids dropping out of ill educated female loins across estates all over the land. God Bless this not so green and not so pleasant land.

INTERNATIONAL BUY NOTHING DAY ??

Today is International Buy Nothing Day apparently. An honourable enough cause - see www.buynothingday.co.uk - but one that many will I guess choose to ignore...

..or maybe not?

In these harder times (notice the relative 'harder' as economic conditions still cannot really be described in an absolute sense of Hard Times a la Dickens, great depression, etc?) people might just decide to spend less today than they have been doing in the past few years..

Credit crunch, mortgage woes - lower interest rates are one thing, but many people are having to stump up severe penalties by way of higher loan to value and arrangement fees on mortgages that are at or above 100% of their homes values and these translate to expensive fees when mortgaged out over the twenty or so year mortgage horizon as people add fees to mortgages instead of paying for them with shorter term loans - job losses looming in several areas of retail and manufacturing let alone the rationalisation of banking that is about to occur in the first half of 2009. All these factors are bearing down hard on most people's spending habits.

All good then, and in my opinion it's about time people generally stopped trying to live way above their incomes, buying newer and more expensive cars on bubble loan schemes - worse still consolidating the last loan with a new one and buying a new vehicle, borrowing against inflated property values to spend on depreciating assets and generally acting like the people they see on the telly. Who'd want to be a celebrity anyway? In the UK recently it would sadly seem plenty of people do.

Hold that thought while I slip back into obscurity for another day - and maybe go and spend some (non-borrowed) money in my nearest city to help Woolies out a bit!

ONE DAY WONDER..

Point A on chart - announcement of US government take over of 2 large mortgage underwriters to "provide stability"
Point B on chart - stock markets drift back to pre-announcement levels.
Time taken - 4 trading days.



Any 1 week stock market chart says the same - by the time of writing the FTSE100 was at 5,335 points, marginally lower than the closing price of 5,362 on Thursday 4th September (i.e. one week ago) folllowing a few days of slightly better performance. The US stock indexes have followed a very similar pattern.

The much heralded support for the market provided by the US government's actions over last weekend have amounted to not a lot in market terms. True, it's early days yet.. but the market has little or no medium term memory. It reacts, it evaluates fundamental strengths and weaknesses and moves on. Fast.

When I used the phrase 'short term' in my last post I meant a little more than a week's worth of reprise.. Yet another proof that modern government's need to re-appraise what exactly their role is in the modern world.. A quick leaf through Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations and other older economics writings might provide a useful guide.. This is highly unlikely given that said books won't also provide help on how to get voted in, or how to put spin on otherwise terrible public sector performance.. For that, the government must turn to consultancy advice.

FREDDIE AND FANNIE, THE NIGHTMARE ON WALL STREET..

Today the US government seems to have provided what might be a short term rally to the financial markets - just when the savings and loan problems were largely swallowed and discounted into the lower price of shares - by announcing a takeover of two large American mortgage lenders, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (you couldn't make it up if you tried!). My main concern is that the UK government don't see this as a rally call for themselves to do something similar in the UK!

As a consequence the UK stock exchange index has started with a 3.6% rise this Monday morning..



But, wait and see the impact over the time period it takes for the market to work out just exactly what difference a government, even the US government! can make to international capital markets??? Later chart planned for posting on Tuesday or in a week's time..

Remember the Northern Rock indecisions?

Please Gordon & Co. in the words of Grandmaster Flash 'don't do it!'