I’m currently involved in a project at work that involves a lot of hurry up and wait. One minute I’m running around putting out a dozen fires, the next I’m stashed in my office waiting for the next Most Important Thing In The Worldâ„¢.

During one of my “wait” moments, I found myself going through some old project notes I’d kept in MacJournal. Since I use Journler now, I looked at exporting from the former and importing to the latter.

Unfortunately, MacJournal doesn’t set the the date created and date modifed on the exported files (it puts the info into the content of the file instead). So I looked at scripting it, and came up with a brain-dead AppleScript to do the deed. This is one of those scripts you write for one-time use, just because you can:

tell application "MacJournal"
  
  set theJournal to the journal named "_Archived"
  
  repeat with entryNumber from 1 to (count of journal entries of theJournal)
    
    set theEntry to journal entry entryNumber of theJournal
    set {entryName, entryCreatedDate, entryModifiedDate, entryContent} to {name, date, modification date, plain text content} of theEntry
    
    if entryContent is missing value then
      set entryContent to " "
    end if
    
    tell application "Journler"
      make new entry with properties {name:entryName, date created:entryCreatedDate, date modified:entryModifiedDate, contents:entryContent, category:"Imported From MacJournal"}
    end tell
    
  end repeat
end tell

Pretty straightforward. The only curiosity was I had was that an empty MacJournal entry (that is, one without any content) would be reported either as contents:missing value or contents:"", but it wasn’t clear to me when each happened, nor the actual difference. Journler doesn’t apparently know what “contents:missing value” means, so I had to turn it into something Journler did understand, thus this code:

    if entryContent is missing value then
      set entryContent to " "
    end if

In early testing, I replaced contents:missing value with contents:" " (a space) because using an empty string (contents:"") generated an error. Later testing (with different content) didn’t have this error. I didn’t spend the time to  figure it out. After all, this was a one-off script to solve a one-time problem. In fact, I’ve probably spent more time writing about the script than I did writing the script itself.

Sigh. Looks like I’ve managed to confuse the folks over at Fidelity. They responded to Tuesday’s email, saying

When a bill is paid with a check (which your bill for $223.85 was), the amount will not be deducted from your account history until the check is paid, so that is why you see it in the billpay “Recent Payments” and not the “Recent History” in your mySmart Cash account.

If you take your current available to withdraw balance ($322.98) and subtract the uncleared check $223.85, you get $99.13, which is $.03 off from your expected total of $99.10. The extra $.03 is from your interest payment on January 30, 2009.

Totally reasonable, makes perfect sense.

Except….

It doesn’t quite match with what the Bill Pay system says:

<Vendor> received your payment electronically on 02/24/2009. Your payment was posted to your <vendor> account on 02/24/2009

Additionally, when I check my <Vendor>  statement online, it says:

$223.85 – paid on 2/24/2009

Clearly there is a disconnect here. So I called up Fidelity, explained the situation, and got transfered to a very nice Bill Pay specialist named Amber. After going through my account, and putting me on hold a few times, Amber came back and basically said

I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s not showing up.

Awesome.

It appears that one Fidelity system shows the bill was “paid electronically”; another system shows it was “paid by check”, which won’t show up as a debit on my account until that check is “cashed”.

I logged into my vendor’s website, which, of course, shows the account as “paid on 2/24/2009”

Amber asked me to check again tomorrow or Friday, as it may take time as “it’s making its way through the system” (even though another bill, paid on the same day, shows up correctly).

The saga continues. Ain’t technology grand?

I opened a Fidelity mySmartCash account in December to consolidate my bill pay and other activities. The e-bill feature they have is much better than what E*Trade currently offers, and the mySmartCash has the possibility of easing my cash flow between multiple savings accounts.

But I’m having a hard time using Fidelity because the website doesn’t do a very good job of showing me how much money I have in there at any one time. Tonight I wrote them to complain:

Hello,

My “Recent Payments” box in my Bill Pay section does not match my “Recent History” in my smartcash account. My “Recent Payments” shows three payments:

2/20: $242.64

2/24: $223.85

2/24: $39

My “Recent History” shows only two payments:

2/20: $242.64

2/24: $39

Yet the bill for $223.85 is shown as “paid on 2/24/2009”. The bill for $39 also shows “paid on 2/24/2009” so I’m not sure why two bills paid on the same day don’t both show up.

Additionally, even if this is just a case of the bill not yet registering in one part of your system, the balance total would be wrong. The current “total” balance shown is $361.98; if and when the $223.85 bill registers, the “total” should show $138.13. Yet the “available balance” shows $222.98. I’ve deposited $966.52 since recently opening this account. My history says I’ve withdrawn $643.57; add in the expected withdrawal of $223.85, that would be $867.42 withdrawn; that should show an “available balance” of $99.10. It’s not clear where the additional $39.03 is coming from.

My experience with the Fidelity website in the less than 90 days I’ve had them gives me tremendous pause, and I’m extremely hesitant to continue using this service, as I don’t have great comfort that the website is showing me complete and accurate information at all times. Please help me understand the situation and provide me with some level of comfort that might convince me to move the rest of my banking and brokerage from E*Trade to Fidelity.

Thanks,

Yeah, I should probably keep my mouth shut about the $39 (and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a third part of their system hasn’t picked up the $39 payment and $0.03 in interest, for example).

A bank site should be up-to-the-minute. There’s no technical reason it can’t be. If this puny website can show you the absolute latest information, they can too.

Let’s see if things resolve themselves, and what Fidelity has to say about it.

Well, that didn’t last long.

Thirteen days after I predicted we’ve seen the stock market bottom of 7,949.09, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dips under it at 7,936.75.

Sigh.

Only 12 points lower, but lower still. It’s the new low for 2009. Dare I suggest it won’t close lower the rest of this year? I do think we’ve seen (something close to) the bottom this year. I maintain we’ll be higher on January 1, 2010 than we were on January 1, 2009. (That would be anything above 8,776.39, or 839 points to the upside. Whew.)

Of course, it just might be easier to test the 52-week low of 7,867.37.

But ya gots to be optimistic about something in this world.

Customer service can make or break a a business relationship. Offer good service, and I’ll stick with you. Do me wrong, and I’ll dump you like a bad stock.

I’ve been using Mint.com since December when K. expressed her love for it. It’s been a long time since I tried for a comprehensive view of my finances, and it’s been a fascinating learning experience.

Mint.com has a few tremendous features, chief among them its attractive and generally usable interface. When that interface fails though, it does so spectacularly, and getting help from their customer support team is a study is poor reading comprehension.

The Problem

The big interface issue causing me to consider deleting my account revolves around their “rules”. Mint.com tries to smartly categorize your various transactions, automatically converting a semi-cryptic credit card entry from “Lucky #757 000000000SAN JOSE” to “Lucky” and placing it in the “Grocery” category.

Extremely handy when it works.

Extremely frustrating when it doesn’t, and it often doesn’t. The problems start when Mint.com gives two distinct transactions the same “smart” name, for example, turning both “AMAZON DIGITAL SVCS 866-216-107″ and  “AMAZON.COM AMZN.COM/BI” into simply “Amazon” and putting them into “Shopping”.

Well, I’d actually like to have the former renamed to “Amazon MP3 Store” and categorize it as “Music”. Mint.com lets me do that… kinda: I can rename their displayed name (“Amazon”) to anything I want.

Of course, since Mint.com considers both “AMAZON DIGITAL SVCS 866-216-107” and “AMAZON.COM AMZN.COM/BI” to be simply “Amazon”,changing the former also changes the latter! 

They’re basically offering me only the opportunity to rename their already modified names! I have no ability to use the original name as the basis of my edits!

Beyond lame.

Poor Reading Comprehension

This gets beyond annoying interface behavior and into the realm of poor customer service when I decided to write them and ask about this behavior.

I’m trying to understand how the “Rules” system works. For example, I have three transactions, all from Amazon. They’re listed in various ways on my credit card:

[Credit Card] calls this MUSIC DWNLDS
[Credit Card] calls this AMAZON DIGITAL SVCS
[Credit Card] calls this AMAZON.COM AMZN.COM/BI

The Rules system for all three say

“You have a rule that renames Amazon…”

But why is it called “Amazon” in your system, rather than “MUSIC DWNLDS”, as it’s reported on my credit card? The current system makes it impossible to correctly assign transactions to the most appropriate categories. For example, while “AMAZON.COM AMZN.COM/BI” might be “Shopping”, “MUSIC DWNLDS” should be “Music”.

Why aren’t I able to have rules based on what the entry is actually called, rather than an arbitrary name Mint has assigned it?

And where can I change those arbitrary names?

About a week or so later, they respond:

Dear Jason,   

Thank you for contacting Mint.com.

If you would like to edit your existing rules, please do the following:

1. Go to the transactions’ page.
2. Go to the “edit rules” link located above the transactions.
3. A box will appear with all of your rules. Please locate the rule that you want to edit or delete.

Hm. I don’t recall asking how to change my existing rules. The closest I came was asking how to change Mint.com’s arbitrary names.

I would have put this off as one bad rep, too busy with real problems to do more than read my last line incorrectly… except I’d received similar bad responses before. When I wrote:

My E*Trade account stopped working 3 days ago with a “wrong password”. Thing is, I haven’t changed my password, so it can’t be that….

Why is E*Trade suddenly not working and telling me my password is wrong?

They responded after a couple of weeks:

I believe that your issue with E*TRADE  has been resolved as it is already added to your Mint account. If you encounter another problem, please contact us again athttps://wwws.mint.com/contact.event#contact-form.

Um… I didn’t write saying I couldn’t add my E*Trade account! I said your system thinks the password it has is wrong!

I’m in a customer service position. I know how difficult it can be to satisfy a customer, especially if you don’t have enough information, or have no good answers. However, in these cases, it’s always best to probe for more data or admit to the lack of a solution. 

In the case of the rules problem, searching the forums reveals dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar complaints: it’s a well-known problem. If Mint.com had provided even a non-answer of “we’re aware of some of the weaknesses in the rules system and we’re working on improving its functionality” I’d completely understand and wait for eventual updates.

Instead I’m left frustrated by a non-answer that reads like it came from an automated response generator with poor pattern matching behavior.

Which might explain the bad rules functionality.

I am far from a stock market expert. Barely a dabbler. I understand how the market works from a intellectual perspective, and have some skin in the game. Despite that, I generally consider it a canonical example of the Greater Fool Theory. I understand that the market—over time—”always goes up” but the last few years have shown that even fundamentally sound companies (like Apple or Amazon) will fall simply because “investors” don’t believe they can sell their shares to someone else at a higher price than they bought them.

The market sometimes moves more for psychological reasons than fundamental ones, and people are operating under fear conditions.

Which brings me to my point:

On January 20, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on at 7,949.09. 

I’m predicting that will be the lowest we’ll see the market the rest of this year.

I have a terrible track record of stock picks, so take my prediction with a big himalayan pink salt brick. But I believe that the wave of optimism accompanying President Obama into office will buoy the markets, and that his fiscal and economic policies will further shore them up.

Now, I’m not predicting a return to the stratospheric heights of 2007; heck, even a return to 10,000, a number we first topped some ten years ago—and last saw in October 2008—would require a greater than 25% increase over the Inauguration Day close (although at least one person is).

Today we saw a 3.5% increase over yesterday’s close. Tomorrow we’ll probably see a 3.5% drop. But I’m now on the record: we’ve seen the bottom. It’s all upside now.

January 20. Inauguration Day. A new President of the United States of America.

Another election, another inauguration, another president. Every four years, the same old thing.

January 20, 2009. Inauguration Day. A new President of the United States of America.

Another election, another inauguration, another president. But definitely not the same old thing.

I find it impossible to express the enormity of the moment for me. I awoke at 7am. I recorded three TV channels across two TiVos. I watched it live at work on a massive screen. I continued watching later events on my office computer. I came home and watched MSNBC’s continued coverage. I instant messaged. I tweeted. I texted. I teared up. I called my mother.

Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.

From my earliest exposure to now-President Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, to his appearance on NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, I’ve always said that this man could be president, I just never expected him to actually become president. I didn’t think this country was ready to elect a black man, that my dream would remain just that.

Then, after a hard-fought primary, America chose him to be the nominee of the Democratic party. An historic night itself, surpassed mere months later by his actual election. And now, today, it’s official. For the first time in our history, a black man, with his black wife, and his black daughters, will be the face of this country.

This is monumental. Everything that he and his family do from now on will have an additional, dare-I-say, tint of history to it. There are lot of “firsts” to come in the next four years, and I welcome every one of them.

Welcome to the club, Mr. President.