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I’m not saying “If you do it my way, you’ll succeed too.”  These aren’t tricks.  This isn’t necessarily repeatable exactly this way.

I’m not arrogant enough to think luck didn’t play a big part — maybe the biggest. Still, here’s my RSS/email subscriber chart from FeedBurner:

The short version: I don’t know which of the following techniques were responsible, or what percentage of the effect was pure luck.

All I can do is tell you what I did, and what I still do.

Initially ..read more

Check your cellphone bills for pricey text message charges. Short-code messages, as they’re called, usually have a string of numbers followed by a name like Premium Text Trivia.

I did a column last week and asked readers to send stories. You’ll find a bunch below.

The CBC has done a few television news items lately, here and here and here.

You get lured in by doing an online contest, which asks you for your cellphone number. You then receive — by text — a PIN number. Once you enter that PIN number on the website, you’ve subscribed.

Here’s a link to the $12.3 million (U.S.) settlement of a class action by m-Qube Inc., one of the biggest offenders. The lawsuit alleged there were not adequate safeguards in place to ..read more

On Thanksgiving we give thanks, but to whom?

I have a lot to be thankful for. I live in a country where I can vote and say anything I want, where it’s possible to make money from a new idea and years of hard work. I love working and I love coming home.

We all say such things on Thanksgiving. I guess it’s nice to be reflective at least once a year. But what good is it, casting our thanks into the void?

To me there’s something missing. It seems like an exercise in self-satisfaction and not a genuine interest ..read more

You have a rented water heater and you pay monthly fees on your gas bill. But Ontario’s gas utilities are no longer in the water heater rental business. Enbridge sold its portfolio to Direct Energy and Union Gas sold to Reliance Home Comfort.

Recently, new competitors are trying to grab the business away. The two legacy firms are losing market share and they’re not happy.

Direct Energy, in particular, has a strong motive to cover its assets. In 2002, it set up the Consumers’ Waterheater Income Fund, which gives investors 65 per cent of the rental revenues, while Direct Energy gets the remaining 35 per cent for life-cycle support.

“The Fund generates very stable cash flow, making it ideally suited to the income trust structure,” it says. But ..read more

Thanks to everyone who has been posting comments here. Today, the number has just surpassed 5,000.

Some comments, of course, come from my own email. I post ones I think you will enjoy reading in full, without the cuts needed when writing in a newspaper.

Here’s a complaint about Summitt Energy, which targets new homeowners and misleads them about what it’s selling. The reader seems to have taken down every word of the sleazy sales pitch.

Another is about Sears, which promised a $50 gift card to a customer who had problems with a new refrigerator. Now the gift card has gone AWOL.

Finally, there’s an epidemic of extortion with low-price movers in Toronto, who add on charges after the fact and make you pay to get ..read more