Daisyntn, Oh how I wish I had this information when the Stanley Furniture was still here. I did email Mr. Scheffer the pictures and the link to this site but I got no response. Customer Service at Stanley said once the store gets the furniture they are not involved. But I do want to call Mr. Scheffer when I have some time to remind him what he is doing to his reputation by not caring about what the stores are getting from China that does not seem to be inspected properly. I lost hours and hours an days of work and missed seeing my father before he died due to the furniture fiasco I had to go through due to Stanley Furniture's misrepresentation of the quality of their furniture and the store not inspecting it first before it ever arrived in my home.

Cynic >This one has me confused though: "...my cell phone provider gouged me for 4 consecutive months of payments even though I was paying cash at their store." If you have auto-pay, why are you paying cash at the store? Something's missing or I'm not following something. I was paying my bill in cash at their store. I had already called the (cell phone provider) ahead of time and told them I would be doing this. Each month my bill would arrive, each month it kept reflecting an overpayment. I would call them and they said it would be corrected. This happened FOUR months in a row. I contacted the credit card company and told them to cancel the card. Same thing happened with them. They would say it would be canceled. The following month I would get a bill for the same incorrect amount. I finally spoke to someone at the CC co. who said until the cell phone provider notified them, I would continue to be responsible for the charges whether they were right or wrong. They never said ANYTHING about having to have a cancellation number. BOTH the cell phone provider and CC company neglected to inform me of this necessary requirement. I wonder why? Well the reason why, is because THEY were MAKING MONEY and didn't want it to stop. These companies do not make it easy. They don't fully inform you when you sign up, and they don't tell you what you really need to do in order to cancel this type of payment. I finally contacted a consumer newspaper reporter. She said she doesn't care for automatic payments for the same reason and gets many calls regarding this. She contacted the cell phone provider's publicity relations department. That worked. They must have called my CC company because everything was taken care of within the month and I didn't receive any more credit card bills. My cell phone bills are what they are supposed to be. I still pay in cash. I no longer have the credit card. They send me solicitations all the time. Thanks, but no thanks. Contacting the AG's office is a good idea. dadoes >dreamgarden probably thought if he/she paid cash, the autopay wouldn't trigger. That's not necessarily the case. I wonder what IS the case? Who at EITHER company, was supposed to tell me I needed a cancellation number in order to stop the autopay? Out of a total of seven calls, 4 to the cell phone provider and 3 to the CC company, not ONE person mentioned this. Don't they teach customer service reps this information? I no longer wanted auto-pay and told them this. I said I would be paying in cash from now on and to cancel auto-pay. I don't understand how I could have been any clearer. >I recall a couple cases where I work of customers having autopay set up through CheckFree. One fellow died, his wife had NO CLUE about any of their finances and the auto-pay kept coming, for MONTHS. She no longer wanted the service, but she didn't contact us or was even aware the service existed, so how are we to know that? "How are we to know that?". How did you find out that her husband died? How do you know the wife no longer wanted the service if she was never contacted? Was she on the account too? Doesn't your company have some policy regarding taking money from a deceased person's account? > The other case, the fellow changed his account services, but didn't change the monthly autopay amount. We contacted him, he still didn't change the amount. Built up a large credit that had to be refunded when he eventually closed the service. When the fellow called to change his account services, was he asked if the present autopay amount was ok? If he was changing his account services, this would seem to be a logical question to ask a customer. Was he notified by telephone or in writing? This is why I like to receive paper billing. Sometimes when a credit card company calls (and leaves a message), they don't always state the nature of their business. When I have called back, they try to sell me some service or item I'm not interested in. Now I don't return calls unless they leave a message telling me something is wrong, or needs to be corrected. I had them put this in my file. I don't want to be bothered with solicitations or irrelevant matters that aren't directly related to some kind of problem with my account. In my opinion the above examples are just more reason to pay as you go and not allow company's to have recurring access to your bank account.

I am in Southern California, South of Los Angeles. We do not get much rain here, and it tends to be sunny most of the time, and summers tend to be very hot. It does tend to be a rather dry climate here, but we are not too far away from the coast, so at least the humidity does not go too low. I can't stand going further inland, I can feel the dehydrating dryness in the air and it is not comfortable. Actually we have had a past couple of days of rain, unusual for summer, and it has been unusually humid. Actually things are looking fairly lush and green in our yard, and the front yards in the neighborhood do not look too bad either. It might be because of the recent rain. It is not always this way, usually things start becoming less green in the summer here, since it is a dry Mediterranean climate and seasonal. So especially put in context, it does not feel like a bad year at all. I do frequently water several particular plants every 2 days, but we have cut back on the sprinklers, and that is what takes up most of the water, since it just sprays water all over the place and is not very selective. The yard is not too huge either. I think perhaps because I water so frequently and consistently, the plants do not need a lot of water. That may sound paradoxical to some, but it really is true. If you do not water very frequently, it takes more water to saturate the soil enough so that the plants will not dry out many days later. And because I water selectively, and only get the plants that need it, not the grass or bushes. I have also been intentionally planting things to try to create a moisture microclimate, and I think that is starting to pay off too. So a combination of several factors. I have recently gotten into gardening, and I do not think I would be able to stand having water restrictions if it started affecting the yard in any way, but fortunately that is not the case. I will also have you all know that I hate those drought tolerant plants that are being promoted. I am trying to turn the yard into a lush temperate rainforest, even though I do not live in the climate for that. I planted a redwood, and special ordered authentic varieties of ferns. Yes, we do have two tree ferns, but I made sure to plant them in locations that do not get full sun, because I know tree ferns often tend to turn brown in this climate. They are planted in just a little partial shade, and seem to be doing okay. I try to give the foliage a quick spray every time I am out there with the hose, to keep them from drying out. We do have a rose geranium bush growing in the front where it gets very hot and dry. This bush is very prolific and vigorously spreads even though it does not get much water, and the soil beneath it is terrible hard clay. The bush grows 3-4 feet high, and seems to thrive where most other plants would bake in the sun and wither, it has spread to 10 feet wide. We did not originally plant it either. It was growing in planters, and wherever those planters were set on the ground, even hard dry clay soil, the roots made their way out of the little drainage holes in the bottom of the planter and established themselves into the ground, propagating a new plant. These things can get a little invasive in your yard if left unattended for a long time. So it is possible to have a lush yard in a fairly hot dry climate that does not use too much water, without making compromises. At least that is the way it seems for our yard right now. Just throwing an optimistic report into this thread, I know many others are struggling.

I "googled" your question and found this. It looks like SSA was making a verification request to establish your identity in order to establish your SSA website account (see paragraphs three and four below) and does not affect your credit score (see last paragraph). The Social Security Administration provides an “Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement” for all workers age 25 or older. The statement provides you with a history of your earnings and projected benefits. The SSA stopped mailing statements a few years ago, but you can obtain your Social Security Statement online at www.socialsecurity.gov. The online statement provides eligible workers with secure and convenient access to their Social Security earnings and benefits information. The online statement provides estimates for retirement, disability and survivor’s benefits, making the statement an important financial planning tool. In addition, the portal includes links to information about other online services, such as, applications for retirement, disability, and Medicare. When you sign up on the SSA website, they carefully verify that you are who you say you are. They ask you to provide several different types of information and to answer questions that only you should be able to answer. They may also use an identity verification service provided by Experian to help verify your identity and protect your privacy when you register to do business with them online. When the SSA makes a verification request to establish your account, Experian may use information from your credit report to help verify your identity. As a result, you may see an entry called a "soft inquiry" on your Experian credit report. This will show an inquiry by the Social Security Administration and the date of the request. Soft inquiries do not affect your credit score, and you do not incur any charges related to them. Soft inquiries are displayed in the version of the credit profile viewable only to consumers and are not reported to lenders. The soft inquiry should not appear on your credit report from Equifax or TransUnion, and will generally be removed from your Experian credit report after 25 months.