Caz counts it down

EssexHebridean

LOVELY news about the confidence thing - well done you! Did have a chuckle at the thought of Finn taking off at speed when he saw you approaching in your hat though - canny devils aren't they! Don't like having their routine interrupted, especially when it's snoozing time they're losing! :rotfl:

Good news on the sales too - and your comment about small businesses and payment methods was really interesting - I'd always assumed that small businesses with business accounts would prefer debit cards to credit cards, for example.

cazmanian_minx

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

And, planting day for neeps here is 1st June - what's the crack in Caithness?

Not sure, to be honest. They're still being dug up at the moment, I know that. I've dug all my old seed packets out of the drawer they've been lurking in for the past five years and will see if I can get any of those to germinate before I start thinking about buying more.

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Good news on the sales too - and your comment about small businesses and payment methods was really interesting - I'd always assumed that small businesses with business accounts would prefer debit cards to credit cards, for example.

Well, it depends on the amount, to be fair. If it's a small amount, then a credit card is better, if it's a large amount then a debit card is better. It's why EasyJet etc. don't surcharge for debit cards - I mean, obviously they'll get better rates than I do, but I pay something like a flat rate 40p for each debit card transaction and 2.9% of the total for each credit card transaction. So for someone buying something for £2 on my website (including postage), I'll get charged 40p (20%) for a debit card and just under 6p for a credit card. A cheque would be something like 65p for the deposit slip and then another 45p for each cheque on that deposit slip - it's almost cheaper to just tear it up when I get them for a couple of pounds!

Today has been mostly about typing. I got assigned today's files yesterday afternoon, five market research interviews, so I got two of them out of the way yesterday, did the remaining three this morning and then emailed in to find out if there was any more work about. There was and I got another 20 minutes of an interview with a managing director in Africa for a grand total of 76 minutes of audio

On the eBay front, the perfume customer emailed to ask if she could pay on Friday (fine) and then emailed again to say actually, if she paid today, could I get it to her this week because she was going away on Saturday? Well, I can post it first class tomorrow, but other than that it's in Royal Mail's hands - she's paid up anyway, so it'll get on its way tomorrow. I haven't got round to transferring the money yet, bad Minx...

I also think I have a dodgy customer on my business account. Two orders yesterday, one today, three different accounts, all of them new and with user IDs which were a seemingly random combination of letters, three different phone numbers, but the same name and address and the same email address - with an .ru suffix. Big red flag!

I rang eBay's call centre to ask them what they thought (the nice thing about being a top rated seller is that you get a PIN which puts you straight through to the Irish one instead of having to go via the Philippines - they're all perfectly lovely in the Philippines, but they don't have the authority to actually do much) and the guy on the other end did some checks and found that there were loads of new accounts opened to that address in the past 24 hours, so he's flagged it and passed the details on to PayPal for them to investigate the source of funds. I'm probably going to get a chargeback on the two orders that were placed yesterday, but I haven't posted the one placed this afternoon and he's advised me to sit on it for 48 hours, just in case PayPal nukes the account. It's only a maximum loss of £8 if I get a chargeback, thank goodness.

cazmanian_minx

eBay fee paid, £21.45 transferred from PayPal to my NatWest account and I checked the progress of my shipment on the book buying website and it's been updated to 'Checked - awaiting payment'

Off to bed to polish my halo now

EssexHebridean

Nice work! :T Well spotted on that dodgy customer too - sounds likely that PayPal will be saying "errr....NO!" doesn't it!

cazmanian_minx

Ahem, small announcement to make:

Say hello to the newest member of the transcription company's ad-hoc proofreading team - I passed the assessment



Since I'll be doing evening shifts in the living room, I've ordered myself some decent headphones. I've been using Mr Minx's Skullcandy over-ear jobs, which are pretty good, but the ones that apparently get the highest ratings from all the transcribers on the company's books are the Sennheiser over-ear ones that are £15 on Amazon at the moment. I still had a fair bit of my Christmas Amazon voucher left over, so I haven't even had to hand over any actual cash and I can claim back the VAT and offset it against tax next year. Result :beer:

eBay sales seem to be picking up very slightly, even though I *still* haven't got round to any more repricing I did get through a bit of the to-do list backlog this afternoon though, so it's working its way up to the top. I was actually intending to bunk off and ride this afternoon, but just as I was thinking that I'd go and ride, I looked out of the window and saw my pony hurtling down the field at top speed doing 'oh-be-joyful' handstands every two or three strides Maybe not today then :eek::rotfl: I think it's a combination of spring grass, moulting and the temperature dropping from 22C on Monday to 6C today, because the five next door were all charging about with their tails in the air as well.

What else? The book and DVD money arrived in my account this afternoon, so that's been YNAB'd. The buffer amount is starting to look healthier - I should be able to allocate the whole £650 Mr Minx transfers to me tomorrow to the June bills :T

JustAboutThere

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Ahem, small announcement to make:

Say hello to the newest member of the transcription company's ad-hoc proofreading team - I passed the assessment



Since I'll be doing evening shifts in the living room, I've ordered myself some decent headphones. I've been using Mr Minx's Skullcandy over-ear jobs, which are pretty good, but the ones that apparently get the highest ratings from all the transcribers on the company's books are the Sennheiser over-ear ones that are £15 on Amazon at the moment. I still had a fair bit of my Christmas Amazon voucher left over, so I haven't even had to hand over any actual cash and I can claim back the VAT and offset it against tax next year. Result T

Great news! Could be the beginnings of a whole new career. Well done, you.

gallygirl

Well done :j

brizzledfw

Great news Caz.. Well done

DebtFree2012

Ahhhh Congratulatuions!!!!

mfmaybe

Well done on the new job. This debt will be gone in no time :T