Is PayPal On Your List?

Prepare yourself for a little rant on dealing with Big Business and sending American jobs overseas! This is going to be a little longer than average post.

As you know, I just published my first ebook, I Still Believe in Tomorrow. Whenever you purchase a book, the payment goes to my publisher, eBookit.com which is located in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

They run everything through PayPal, which lists their offices in California. However, I just found out their Customer Service Center is in the Philippines. Let me tell you a little story about the quality of workers PayPal employs there.

When I found my publisher, I did not know just how I would get paid; and I did not know anything about PayPal. Go back to when the book went online on November 28, 2011. I received my first payment for those few days in November, only after I called the publisher and found out I had to contact PayPal and have them forward my check to my bank. I was under the mistaken assumption it would just automatically be deposited in my bank account. I know, I know, I know what they say about assuming. So, I called PayPal and they deposited my check in my account and told me they would do that every month from now on, on or about the fifteenth of every month.

December fifteenth came and went and sure enough, my deposit was made on the seventeenth. Now, December starts and sales start to add up. It was fun to watch! I remember thinking, come the middle of January, I will get a nice sum made to my bank account. It never happened! It was not deposited on the twentieth, the twenty-fifth and not today.

I called my publisher and he gave me the number to reach their customer service department. By the way, PayPal has no Customer Service number on their website, at least I could not find one.

I called the number and only spent a few minutes on hold to get a representative who told me they did not have the ability to forward my money to my bank! I found that amusing since I had been told the month before, "It was no problem."

After a rather lengthy discussion with the misinformed young woman, guess what I did next? If you guessed me saying rather forcefully, "Let me talk to your supervisor," you are correct! The supervisor was very helpful, and walked me through a fairly complex process to get my monthly Royalty check deposited into my Patrick Communications bank account.

Of course it will take two or three days for my bank to deposit my PayPal check. Evidently, they do not trust PayPal any more than I do! Unfortunately, I am stuck in a situation now dealing with another corporation who has taken at least some of their operations off shore. I hate that and I told both of them my feelings! And, if you are a long time reader of this blog, you know I do not use that word lightly! Just click on the word HATE in the labels list below and you can read my feelings on the word.

There, I feel better now.

Click on the cover image to make it larger:

If you have already purchased and read the book, how did you like it? If you liked it, did you forward my website on to your friends and encourage them to purchase a copy and forward it to their friends? If you did not like it, I would like to hear your comments too.

If you have not purchased it, there is no time like the present. You can order it by clicking here.

FYI: I have already booked a couple workshops from the book and the two newspapers stories written about me recently. Hopefully, it is starting to pick up speed! I need to get in front of an audience again soon! I need my fix!

 As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

A Silver Lining

Can there be a silver lining to drug dealers keeping a lion, tiger and bear cub as status symbols? Of course there can! That's why I titled this post A Silver Lining.

According to an article in Telegraph.co.uk, dated December 7, 2009, three normally mortal enemies that rank high on the food chain were being raised as status symbols by drug barons in Atlanta, Georgia. You can read the entire article by clicking here.

That was eight years ago. The young predators were delivered to the Noah's Ark Animal Rehabilitation Center in nearby Locust Grove, Georgia, where they decided to keep the young animals together. Look at them today:

I particularly like this one as Baloo the bear puts his paw on his buddy Shere Khan the tiger's back.


This picture begs the question, "Where does a 1,000 pound American black bear take a nap?" Answer: Anywhere he wants!


Now, I know you are thinking, "Okay, Mike, that's cute, but what's your point?"

I am glad you asked. We all know these three species in the wild would never get along because they would have learned to "Kill or be killed" if confronted by a member of one of the other two species. They would have learned to be aggressive and became violent killers. It is the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. They would have learned to hate their adversaries in order to survive.

We all know hate is a learned emotion. How great would it be if humans never learned to hate?

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

P.S. If you are a new reader to this blog, have not read my November 8, 2009 post on hate, and would like to, you can go directly to it by clicking here. There are a few interesting comments there too.

I Hate The Word "Hate"

One word I have come to despise these last several years is HATE! It seems to be used more and more all the time. It bothers me to the point where I am very conscious about how I use it. I do not use it much any more, and when I do, I stop to check myself and ask, "Do I really hate that?"

It gets thrown around everywhere and I wonder if we really think about just what it means?

According to dictionary.com, hate is defined as:

–verb (used with object)

1.	to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest: to hate the enemy; to hate bigotry.

2.	to be unwilling; dislike: I hate to do it.

–verb (used without object)

3.	to feel intense dislike, or extreme aversion or hostility.

–noun

4.	intense dislike; extreme aversion or hostility.

5.	the object of extreme aversion or hostility.

It is the hostility part that bothers me. We saw it demonstrated again in Fort Hood just last Thursday. Almost immediately, the hate mongers came out and started in on how they hate all Muslims. Did we hear the same screams of hatred towards all Christians when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995? If we did, I don't remember it. (On a side note: he wrote a letter telling why he did it. You can read it by clicking here. I found it interesting he sent the letter to Fox News which was published almost six years to the day he bombed the building.)

If you ever have an opportunity to stand on a school playground for any length of time, just listen to the children tell each other how they hate another child because of something they may or may not have said or done. Have you ever had your sweet, little seven-year-old daughter say, "I hate vegetables!" Where did she learn to hate anything?

Is hate a learned emotion? Are we born to hate, or do we learn to hate from the people around us?

Have you ever heard yourself say, "I hate this traffic," or "I hate rainy days," or "I hate the Packers and the Yankees"? Do you really hate or are you just frustrated because you are inconvenienced or disappointed your team lost? Even former President George H.W. Bush said he hated broccoli.

Personally, there are things I hate. I hate war, violence, cancer, poverty, homelessness and racism — to name just a few. I have a much longer list of things I dislike. (He said with tongue firmly planted in cheek.)

Confucius said, "Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny."

Are we becoming, or are we already a country of hate? If we are, what can we do to turn it around, or is it a lost cause?

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike