It's Only A Paper Rose

A couple of times now, I've noticed Facebook ads for a gift company. As near as I can tell, they're along the lines of Spencer's Gifts - the ads tout themselves as the Best Design Gifts Under $100, but are universally ridiculous things like a hipster-moustache ring or colored toilet paper. So that's kind of a FAIL right there.

What really pushes it over the top, however, is what happens when you click the ad (or go to the website) - it immediately fades out the actual page and demands that you "request membership" from them (by entering your personal information, of course) before you're allowed to see their products or buy anything from them.

...I'm going to go out on a limb and assume these folks are on the level, so that said, I'd like to address a note to them. Look guys, I get the whole "cashing in on cachet" thing, but you're breaking the fundamental rule of sales - namely, you are making it more difficult for me to give you money. Not that I would have bought any of the products you were advertising, but I would have linked to them in this post, and who knows? Maybe someone reading this would've thought that'd be a perfect gift, and bought it. But I can't link to them, because I'm not going to fill in my email address and God knows what else to request membership to a gag-gift store when there are roughly 100,000 competitors online.

I've been a proponent of credit unions since long before it was fashionable to abandon large banks; I made the switch when we moved to Arizona, having gotten increasingly tired of Wells Fargo's increasingly labyrinthine requirements to avoid monthly fees. It's been nearly two years now and I've never regretted making the switch. Sometimes it's a little inconvenient not being able to find a fee-free ATM nearby, but given that [a] I barely ever use cash and [b] you can get cash back at the grocery store with no fees, I can't say as I've found that aspect particularly problematic.

But I wanted to send a shout-out to American Southwest Credit Union in particular. Not only have they had excellent service whenever I've been by, and not only did they give us a screamingly good deal on our used-car loan, but they have all sorts of nifty little touches that really make you feel like a valued customer. One program is their holiday skip-a-payment - if you have non-real-estate loans through them, you can fill out a form and skip your loan payment for the month of December, which makes budgeting for gifts much, much easier. (I assume that it still accrues interest, but with an APR of less than 7%, one month doesn't worry me overmuch.) Additionally, they've been advertising for a while on their website a "knock of 1%" promotion - refinance one of your loans with them, and they'll take 1% off the interest rate. I'd assumed this was only for outside loans, but today I looked at the fine print, and they'll do it for in-house ones as well, once they're 24 months old. So hopefully next March, when our auto loan qualifies, they'll still be running it.

Seriously, it's not very often that I feel this valued as a customer by any institution. Here's hoping that the hundreds of thousands of other folks who've made the credit-union switch have equally good experiences.