Category: Editorial

In the process of updating our living quarters, I had the opportunity to use both SelectBlinds.com and also Blinds.com for different window coverings in our house.  Since my carpet review of Home Depot and Empire Carpet was so popular, it seems that people want to hear about this.

Blinds.com

Blinds.com was the first company we did business with.  We ordered about 20 1″ wood blinds.  The total cost was about $1000.  The blinds arrived promptly – within about 2 weeks of our order.  The blinds look great, and we haven’t had many complaints.  Within a few months, one of the blinds that we ordered had the string break; we barely use the blinds, so we’re pretty sure it was a manufacturing issue.  We contacted the company, they sent out a new one, and everything is fine.  Overall, I think we got a really good price and the company honored their promises.  Great.

SelectBlinds.com

I used SelectBlinds on a secondary order because this type of blind was cheaper than via Blinds.com.  We wanted the honeycomb shades.  These take a little longer to order, presumably because they sell less volume.  They estimated 2 weeks.  After 3 weeks had gone by, I hadn’t heard anything, so I contacted them via their website.  No response.  Instead, I called their 888 number, and the support person was fairly nice.  She indicated that they’d have to contact the manufacturer, and then find out what happened – as our order had already passed to the manufacturer.   They then did reply via email that they had contacted the manufacturer and that the order would be mailed “any day now”, and the order was finally processed over a week later.  In all, it took about 4 weeks to get the blinds.  Once finally received, the blinds were great; we like them and they installed fine.

Conclusion

Both companies provided what we asked for and the blinds look great.  Blinds.com had a one low quality blind, which they fixed without trouble.  SelectBlinds was a little late with delivery, but the blinds were less common ones.  Overall, I think the two were exactly the same.  My conclusion:  use whatever coupons you can find and just pick the cheapest.  The product, ease of installation, and promises on goods delivered is about the same.

For the intelligent readers of this blog, this entry is just a rant.  I heard a segment on the radio tonight about “Should you Refinance”, and I was pretty appalled at the advice given.  The expert on the radio said, “If you are already well into your loan, one drawback is that you’ll reset the clock for 30 years with your new loan…”

Ok, well its true that you generally get 30 more years to repay.  But since when is that a drawback?   His statement reflects the underlying principle of how Americans view loans – and it is very troubling. 

Refinancing shouldn’t be about getting a lower monthly payment unless you simply can’t afford your current loan (should be rare).  Refinancing should be about saving money because you are paying less in interest each year and paying more against your principal instead.  It’s pretty simple.

Are we so stupid that we think we have to put the dollar amount that is on the payment slip each month?  Yeah, I guess we are – welcome to the land of the ‘interest only’ ’30 year loan’.

As this blog has garnered more users over time, there have been a couple of comment threads which have degraded a bit.  Recently one was brought to my attention where a sole proprietor from one small company wrote some comments which were not well received by others.  He used his real name, which is somewhat uncommon – let’s call him “SmallGuy”.  Readers then replied back saying that SmallGuy was bad unreliable and a rip off.

Unfortunately for SmallGuy, this blog is more popular than his company’s web page.  Google picked up the whole conversation, and a search for “SmallGuy” now brings up belshe.com above SmallGuy’s website, including “SmallGuy sucks” right in the snippet! 

Obviously, SmallGuy is not too happy about this; customers searching for references on him don’t see very good stuff.  And all of this is because he posted a comment using his real name on my blog, and he probably didn’t think enough about the possible long term effects of this comment before he wrote it.

Unfortunately, SmallGuy’s name is pretty unique.  If it weren’t so unique, Google wouldn’t show belshe.com as a top result for his name.  Everyone should remember that data that goes up on the net goes up forever.  You can’t take it back once you press ‘post’ – ever.  Even if I deleted the comment, its still out there in untold numbers of RSS caches, archives.org, and other places.

Those of us with unique names need to be doubly careful.  On one hand, our uncommon surnames lead to better prominence on the net for those searching for us.  On the other, if you say anything bad, it’s permanent and undeniable. If your name is Smith, you don’t have to worry!

As for SmallGuy’s dilemma, I offered that if he can get the poster of the negative comment to send me an email to change the comment, I will do so.  That is, if he can solve his own customer issues, then he can mostly fix this.