January 2007
You are currently browsing the articles from General Finance written in the month of January 2007.
More great information written by Robert Powell in IBD.
Call it a mistake waiting to happen. Every year millions of workers who retire or switch jobs must figure out what to do with money in their 401(k) plan. Should they leave the money with their former employer? Should they cash out? Should they transfer the money to their new employer’s plan? Should they roll over the money into an IRA?
Big money may be at stake in the answer to those questions. And lots of people still make costly mistakes even when they answer the questions correctly.
Consider: Some 7.5 million Americans took about $440 billion in distributions from their 401(k) plans in 2004, according to Brightworks Partners research. Of the 7.5 million, 6.25 million were job changers and 1.25 million retired. Of the 7.5 million, 55% had 401(k) balances greater than $5,000.
Where did the money go? About 45% — representing some $200 billion — rolled their 401(k) into an IRA, while 32% left their money in their former employer’s plan, 20% withdrew the money and paid the taxes due on that distribution, 9% transferred their money to a retirement plan at their new employer and 6% purchased an annuity or arranged to have the money paid in installments over a period of time.
To the untrained eye, all that 401(k) money sloshed to and fro problem free. Nothing could be further from the truth.
According to Mercer HR Services, many workers get off the retirement-savings track when faced with the what-to-do-with-my 401(k) question. For one, many workers — especially those who had 401(k) balances of less than $5,000 — took taxable cash distributions. In fact, more than 40% of distributions from a 401(k) plan were taken in cash, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Taxable cash distributions
A new law — the automatic IRA rollover law — was put in place in 2005 to address what the U.S. Department of Labor called leakage, small-balance 401(k) owners cashing in their nest eggs. With that law, workers who have between $1,000 and $5,000 in their 401(k) and leave their employer will have their money automatically rolled over to an IRA unless they choose otherwise. And to some degree, that new law has helped reduce the problem of cash-outs, David Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council (PSCA).
According to a Centier Bank study of small-balance plans published in a PSCA newsletter, only 2.7% of workers cashed out of their 401(k) plans over a 17-month period following the enactment of the automatic IRA rollover law. What’s more, 12% of workers had their 401(k) automatically transferred into what’s officially called a safe harbor IRA. That’s an IRA in which the worker’s money is invested in funds designed to preserve principal and provide a reasonable rate of return. (One problem with this model is that the safe harbor IRA may or may not sync up with the investor’s investment goals so it’s imperative that workers examine whether the investments in the safe harbor IRA make sense or not.)
The bigger problem with small balance transfers, however, is this. James Boyd of Centier Bank noted that there’s a large percentage of what the industry calls “no-contacts,” that is, missing or nonresponsive 401(k) participants. Some 80% of small-balance participants who left their employer were labeled as “no contacts” in the Centier Bank study. And in the extreme, funds in those plans could be escheated by a state as unclaimed property. And that’s just another form of leakage, according to Boyd.
Paperwork problems
Even workers who want to roll over their 401(k) plan to an IRA can fly off the savings track, according Mercer HR Services. Indeed, the process to transfer those assets is downright difficult and onerous.
For instance, about one-third of the forms required to complete the transfer are not completed correctly. In other cases, the forms are lost in transit. Workers often spend countless days if not weeks completing, correcting and tracking down paperwork and calling multiple plan sponsors. Mercer estimates that the traditional process of requesting and completing an IRA rollover could take up to two to three weeks.
So what can be done to head off those problems? First, make sure an IRA rollover is the best option. “Before deciding to roll over 401(k) assets to an IRA, people should make sure that they are not missing out on other benefits by rolling over the assets,” Denise Appleby of Appleby Retirement Consulting said in an e-mail.
Appleby said there are two cases when a worker might choose something other than a rollover. If a person has employer stock in a qualified plan account that has been highly appreciated since they were first added to the account, Appleby said it may be more beneficial to have those stocks credited to a regular savings account instead of an IRA, as that person would then be able to apply capital gains treatment to the earnings. “Rolling these stocks to an IRA means that the individual would pay ordinary income tax on any distribution of the earnings from the traditional IRA, instead of the capital gains rate,” she said.
In another case, Appleby said if the balance in the qualified plan includes after-tax amounts, the person should consider whether it would be more beneficial to have that amount credited to a regular account, instead of being rolled over to an IRA.
“Rolling over employer stocks and after-tax amounts are not necessarily poor choices, and may even be suitable for some individuals,” she said. “However, many individuals’ roll over these amounts unknowingly and attempt to reverse the rollover, but then it’s too late.’
Once the decision to do an IRA rollover as been made, Ed Slott, author of “Your Complete Retirement Planning Road Map,” suggests that the “best way to get this done right is to engage the people that have the most to gain from having you as their customer.”
Slott said workers leaving a company should contact either the IRA custodian or the financial adviser who will be investing the IRA funds early in the process. “They will make sure the rollover is done properly,” he said. “They will be gaining a new customer so they will be more than happy to handle all the paperwork.”
Slott said workers should never leave it to the plan sponsor or plan provider to help with the paperwork. “They generally do not have competent help and just really want to get rid of you,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The people at the plan don’t work for you. They work for the plan so they could really care less if the transfer goes as you would have liked.”
Appleby agrees. “Before completing the rollover request, the individual should have it, and the account statement, reviewed by a financial adviser who is proficient in the area of rollovers and IRA management, to ensure that the proper elections are made on the forms, and to help ensure that the options selected are the ones more suitable for the individual’s financial profile,” she said.
No matter who does the rollover, make sure it is done as a trustee-to-trustee transfer (a direct rollover) where the funds go directly from the plan to the IRA, Slott said. “If the funds are withdrawn and then rolled over to the IRA then a 20% withholding tax will be taken from the funds and it may be tough to find the money to make up the 20% to complete the rollover,” he said. “With a direct rollover, 100% of your company plan funds go to your IRA with no tax withholding.”
What’s more, with a direct rollover, the worker doesn’t have to worry about depositing the retirement money into an IRA within the 60-day grace period. If the taxpayer doesn’t roll the retirement money into an IRA within 60 days, the taxpayer will pay a penalty on the distribution and possibly more taxes.
After requesting the withdrawal/rollover
After requesting the withdrawal, Appleby said the person should take the following steps:
- Find out from the plan administrator when the transaction will be processed. Some plan administrators process distributions during certain periods, like the end of every quarter or only after a certain number of days have passed since the end of employment.
- Check back with the plan administrator about a week before the due date to make sure it is on track.
- Check with the receiving financial institution, not only to make sure the funds were received but that they were credited to the right account. There are countless instances where assets are erroneously credited to regular accounts instead of IRAs. Often, the error is not detected until months or even years later, creating an accounting nightmare for everyone involved.
- Also, check to make sure that amounts that are credited to IRAs are processed properly. For instance, check to make sure it was processed as a rollover contribution, which is reported on IRS Form 5498 and not as a nonreportable transfer.
Even workers who do IRA rollovers get off retirement-savings track
Appleby said most qualified plans liquidate the plan assets and complete the rollover in cash. This means that the money will likely sit in cash or a low-interest money-market fund in the IRA, she said.
Here is more great information from Investors Business Daily
In some cases, the money sits in cash because of inertia; investors have a proclivity to do nothing. In other cases, the money sits in cash because investors don’t know how to re-allocate their funds or find funds that were similar to the ones in their 401(k) plan.
“Individuals should make the money work for them by having it invested in assets that can produce higher returns,” said Appleby. And they should consider hiring an adviser to help with that process, say both Appleby and Slott.
For more on rolling over you 401k click here.
Written by Nagel on January 31st, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Household and How To and Retirement and Stocks and Taxes.
Hopefully you do not need this information, but I am sure a lot out their need it. The housing market is down and will remain down for sellers this year. Staging your home to sell it is essential to getting it sold. Bankrate.com’s Steve McLinden offers up these tips on selling your home in a down market.
In short, the housing market, after a historic run-up in prices, is correcting. While that’s of little concession to current and would-be sellers, it’s not the end of the world either, especially if you don’t need to sell immediately. Economics elsewhere are encouraging. Recession doesn’t appear imminent. Wall Street appears healthy. Unemployment is low, and the general economy is good.
The market, as it always does, will reach equilibrium again, though probably not before mid-2008 or so, most economists estimate. So reset that panic button and sit back to raise a glass to 2007 as a transition year that will bring us one step closer to healthier home sales. In the meantime, take note of how home-buying and home-selling strategies change in a down market.
Here are seven selling tips and seven buying tips, for ‘07, that could help save you a little grief in the short term and a lot of money in the long term.
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1. Price to sell. If you really must sell now, don’t mess around. List your house based on what the market dictates today, not the prices that friends, relatives and co-workers got last winter or last spring. And consider that some — certainly not all — real estate agents may suggest you hang on to a higher sale price in hopes they’ll earn higher commissions. At the same time, be wary of agents who will urge you to set an excessively low price — just so they can collect fees.
2. Consider all credible offers. Holding fast for a better offer might put you in a situation where you’re merely playing catch-up with a moving market. Don’t assume there will always be another offer coming down the pike. You may need to come off your price 5 percent in some areas and 10 percent or more in others.
3. Offer to proffer. Buyers are requesting all kinds of enticements to spice the pot. Club memberships, prepaid lawn maintenance, moving-expense reimbursements, all appliances included and liberal repair credits are just a few possible throw-ins. Don’t be shocked if you hear, “Throw in that plasma TV and we’ve got a deal.” Consider in advance how far you’ll be willing to go, but draw the line, however, at “first-born child.”
4. Catch the wave at the source. Prepare your home for sale at the very earliest point this “spring” (actually early March or even late February), the time when seasonal buying interest is just starting to build.
5. Preserve your equity. Until the market stabilizes, refrain from borrowing from home equity (or raiding your 401(k), for that matter) to pay your bills, or for vacations and other purchases.
6. Gain in a sell-buy scenario. If you’ll be buying another home at the same time you’re selling your current one, the price reduction on the new one can compensate for the “loss” you’re taking on the old one. If you plan a “move up” to a better neighborhood and are paying 10 percent below list after selling your old home for 10 percent below list, your net dollar savings will actually be more.
7. Stay if possible. If you’re happy in your home and are meeting your expenses but want to sell due to continuing “housing bubble” fears, sit a spell. A home is a shelter first, and investment second. Except for a handful of markets that are still hyperinflated, odds are that it will pay to ride out the storm. Generally, the early stages of a downturn are the scariest because that’s when amateur investors are dumping “spec” properties cheaply.
Written by Nagel on January 30th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Household and How To and Real Estate.
An inverted bond yield curve is when shorter term bonds yield more than longer term bonds. This is counter intuitive because bonds should yield the opposite of this–why get paid more for a shorter term bond? The Federal Reserve puts short-term bond rates higher to hold inflation back and simultaneously the market holds back long-term bond rates as well. The inverted bond yield curve is occuring right now. Odds are that the Fed will lower short-term rates sometime in 2007. With this the inverted yield curve will go back to normal.
How do bond investors combat this inverted yield curve? Certificates of Deposit is an idea. A longer term CD might give you the yield you desire and avoid the problems with bonds currently. Beginning a ladder of Bonds and/or CDs could help as well. This method fights off the probelms of an inverted yield curve and any other issue with bonds and CDs by spreading out the maturities. By having several of these with differing maturities you will avoid low yields and then when yields rise you can try to take advantage of the better rates.
Written by Nagel on January 29th, 2007 with no comments.
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We all have friends, family members or neighbors who have had some questionable tax deductions, but in the following article these tax deductions take the cake.
Bankrate.com, by Jay MacDonald
Have you heard the one about the $300 breast pump? The male model? The pimped-out Amish buggy?
That’s right — Bankrate’s back with another nine of the craziest tax write-offs you’ve ever heard of, in the hope it will make paying your 2006 federal income tax a little bit easier.
For our last installment of the nine weirdest write-offs, we combed the country collecting stories from certified public accountants about the craziest tax deductions they’d ever seen. The search turned up plenty of ingenious ways in which taxpayers have tried to justify deducting everything from ostrich breeding to sperm donations to dog food.
Dogs once again get their due in this year’s collection. While our pets may seem like part of the family, as we will see, attempts to treat them as actual dependents — or more outrageously, subcontractors — simply won’t fly with the Internal Revenue Service.
It’s never a good idea to tempt fate by trying to slide one by Uncle Sam. Serious consequences may result from underreporting income, filing a false or erroneous claim, or attempting to make up your own personal tax rules.
Deductions in the tax code tend to fall into two broad categories, according to John Barghini, a CPA and partner in Hansen, Jergenson, Nergaard & Co. LLP of Minneapolis.
“Deductions are primarily related to business activities or where our government wants to reward us for being family people, as in dependent and day care deductions,” he says.
While it may seem like deductions would be easy to abuse, Barghini says most taxpayers don’t consider the reward worth the risk.
“I think there is more unreported income than there are overstated deductions,” he says. “The deductions where people tend to fudge it are in charitable contributions. And some you can’t fudge, because things like mortgage interest or real estate taxes are typically reported to the IRS.”
Ah, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try.
Daffy deductions
Here are nine of the craziest write-offs we’ve ever heard of. Warning: Don’t try these at home!
Nine craziest deductions
1. Hidden asset
Elizabeth Dittrick of Dittrick & Associates in Cleveland was a staff accountant with Arthur Andersen when she witnessed a particularly uncomfortable client meeting with a married couple. The deduction was legitimate; it was the underlying asset that proved to be the problem.
“We were going over their tax information and the tax manager asked the gentleman, ‘Now what about the mortgage interest deduction for the condo in Utah?’ Unfortunately, the wife didn’t know about the condo in Utah, where he had set up his mistress. It was a big ‘oops’ moment. There was this stony silence in the room. It was absolutely awful,” she recalls.
2. Dog-ductions, part 1
What dog lover hasn’t melted when man’s best friend gives him that baleful look as he heads off to work? One taxpayer decided to create his own tax rule to ease the pain: “There is one individual who tried to deduct a day care expense for their dog,” says Barghini. “The person was working and they didn’t feel that the dog should be left alone, so they hired somebody to watch the dog, then tried to take a day care tax credit for the doggy-sitting. The dog clearly was an economic dependent, but not for tax purposes.
3. Now THAT’S a super!
Sure, it’s easy to find bad things to say about landlords, but what about all the good things they do? Dittrick admits that while she liked the sentiment, she wasn’t buying this landlord’s story for a minute: “There was a guy who had rental property and tried to deduct a limousine charge in the year he got married by claiming that he had taken his renters out for a night on the town, when I knew that it was for the wedding,” she says. “I ended up refusing to sign the return.”
4. At that price, it should change diapers, too
CPA Ruth Ann Michnay of St. Paul, Minn., thought she might have been out of touch with maternity technology on this one: “I once had a young mother as a client who listed a breast pump at over $300,” she says. “My kids are grown up but I never remember them being that expensive, so my first reaction was that it must have been some medical situation with the child. You never know. But no, it was strictly for her convenience to operate. She was claiming it as a medical expense. I talked her out of it.”
5. Dog-ductions, part 2
You think it’s hard to find good help? Tell it to the IRS. Even the CPA source for this one wished to remain anonymous: “A landscaper who was under audit with the IRS had deducted the expense of their dog because he would pull the wagon on landscaping jobs. They felt he was out there helping. He may have been listed as an independent contractor.”6. Me, I’m a freelance food critic
There are those taxpayers who mistakenly believe that if their hobbies come anywhere close to their means of making a living, what they spend on it should be deductible as a business expense. And perhaps it is — on Mars! New York CPA Alan J. Straus knew of a Hollywood set electrician who tried to write off the cost of buying and renting movie videos and DVDs, and a professor of Italian culture and European art who tried to deduct his theater and concert tickets.
Then again, sometimes what appears to be a flagrantly crazy write-off on paper will actually turn out to be permissible. Witness this unlikely deduction from Alan Dlugash, a CPA with the New York firm of Marks Paneth & Shron LLP: “A client not only tried to, but properly did deduct several thousands of dollars of comic book purchases. He was a university doctoral student, doing his thesis in his field of expertise … having to do with the relationship of comic books to the societal values of the era.” D’oh!
7. Dog-ductions, part 3
Barghini had one enterprising client who believed he’d found a doggone great way to boost his charitable deduction and thus shave a little off his taxes. “An individual who bred dogs was looking for a tax deduction, so he thought that he would give one of his dogs to the Humane Society and take a deduction for it. They were valuable dogs but he bred it, so he could not take a tax deduction for it.” The reason? Barghini explains that the tax code allows you to depreciate over time such breeding stock as cattle, race horses and yes, even show dogs, provided you are breeding them with the intent to sell the offspring. In these instances, you may depreciate the breeding male or female, but not the offspring.
8. Clothes (deductions) make the man
Here’s a line of thought we’ve all tried on at one time or another: I have to look professional at work so why shouldn’t I deduct the cost of my suits, shoes and ties? And of course that is perfectly allowable — on Uranus! Here on Earth however, a less generous tax rule applies, as one of Barghini’s clients found out: “I was dealing with a male model who wanted to write off his entire wardrobe because he needed to look good all the time. There are very strict rules about writing off clothing. Basically, if you are required to wear a uniform of a nature that you’re not going to wear it out in public socially, such as an auto mechanic’s blue jumpsuit with a patch that says ‘John’ or nursing clothes, you can write them off. It’s basically clothes that you’re only going to wear at work; you’d be embarrassed to go to the bar in them. If it’s clothes that you can wear on a daily basis, you cannot write them off. Businessmen or businesswomen trying to write off their suits will not fly.”
9. Pimp my buggy
This one was so outlandish that Dittrick actually faxed us the two-page itemized receipt to prove it: “We live in an Amish community here and we had an Amish guy who tried to take a deduction for his buggy with velvet interior, the whole works. It was tricked out. He was legitimately Amish, but with all the accoutrements on this buggy, when they’re supposed to live the simple life, it was absolutely hilarious,” she says.
How pimped out was his ride? According to the receipt, this baby came equipped with dash lights, kick plates, tinted windshield, speedometer, hydraulic brakes and dimmer switches. The standard buggy costs $2,675; this pimped-out version ran $3,545.
“He could deduct the buggy of course, since it was used for business, but on that one, we had to pick and choose what we were going to deduct,” Dittrick says. “But the Amish teenagers do go through a period where they sew their wild oats, so to speak, and put the fuzzy dice and boom boxes in them. Every so often in the police blotters up here you’ll see a complaint about a buggy with music playing.”
More on taxes check out:
Consumerism Commentary
My Money
Taxes
Written by Nagel on January 28th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Household and Taxes.
Below are some more tax tips and breaks to look out for when compiling your 2006 tax return for the IRS.
- You can deduct your state and local sales taxes instead of your state and local income taxes.
The IRS has estimates of your sales taxes, but if you purchased big ticket item you had better find the receipt.
Giving clothes to Goodwill or donating your old car used to be a great deduction. Now the cost basis for the car will not be the Blue Book Value, but what the charity sold the car for. Plus you can’t count old ratty clothes as a decduction–they say the most in a good used condition.
Many American donate money and gifts to charities so make sure you have all your donations documented.
- Go Green and get tax breaks
It is becoming more and more mainstream to buy a hybrid car or fix up your home for better energy efficiency. Look into your state tax breaks as well as the federal ones because they can add up to a huge deduction.
- Education Can be Rewarded
Tuition deduction can let you write off as much as $4k so make sure you compile all your records proving your education expenses.
Here’s some more on taxes.
PfBlog on free tax filing.
Written by Nagel on January 27th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Household and Taxes.
A few months I spoke often of how I was concerned about the stock market taking a dip. Well, I have been getting that feeling again. I was not right the first time when conditions were much worse than now, but the stock market moves in cycles. There has been a good run for a while, but can it really last? Their are a lot of bulls out there saying this will be another double-digit gain for the S&P 500, but the bears seem to be getting ignored.
Personally, I do not have any investments outside of retirement accounts, many of which are set up directly through mutual fund companies. However, my other holdings in my Scottrade account and my wife’s TD Ameritrade (we are in the process of closing this account) account have been liquidated (including Pfizer (PFE), Walgreen (WAG) and Qualcomm (QCOM)), except for the S&P 500 EFT and The New York Stock Exchange (NYX).
While I am not 100% sold on the bulls, but I am going to re-enter the stock market. I am going to go after Goldman Sachs (GS), Altria (MO) and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). I believe all of these stocks are the best in their sector, also I think they Altria (MO) and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) will be able to weather any potential stock market downturn. Goldman Sachs (GS) deals only with the wealthiest of the wealthy, so if there is an economic slowdown this group will be less affected than average Americans
Written by Nagel on January 26th, 2007 with no comments.
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We moved into our house on November 24, 2006 and we have done a lot of upkeep, repairs and rehab. However, we took the plunge on Tuesday–demolition began on our kitchen. Our kitchen is as old as our house–40 years–so it was time to retire the kitchen cabinets and countertops. I have family and some others doing the job so I am very comfortable with the situation, but it will be difficult. Our house will be in a state of dissaray for a month or two because of this job in addition to adding about 150 square feet of hardwood at our front door entrance and we have to wait 5 weeks for the countertops for the kitchen and master bath. We currently consider our laundry our kitchen–not very convenient. They finished tearing off the cabinets and drywall on Day 1 and I was very impressed. Day 2 some electrical work was completed and we have a new light fixture in our upstairs hallway. It seems as though it might not take as long as I first thought, but there is still a lot of work ahead. Right now I wish I could go on a month vacation, but that is not reality.
Written by Nagel on January 25th, 2007 with no comments.
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General Finance blog tries to continually teach and offer you information on personal finance so you can get a better understanding of the basics. Then hopefully you get more confidence and interest and start to teach yourself more and more. I will continue to offer up this education.
I noticed this blog offered up some good basics.
My Money Blog offers some definitions of important investing terminology.
Written by Nagel on January 24th, 2007 with no comments.
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My wife and I like most people have mutual funds in our Roth and Rollover IRAs. I track the performance of these funds along with the rest of our portfolio very closely. In my opinion one of the mid-cap mutual funds we have investing in for years has underperformed. The first year I let it go because of their excellent long-term performance track record. However, now it has been over two years since I first notice this lag in returns so a couple weeks ago we decided to switch to a different mid-cap mutual fund that I like better. I have invested in this fund family and this fund before so I was comfortable making the switch. With the other mutual fund we wanted to switch there was a better fund within the family of funds so they will keep our business–just in a different fund.
These decisions have set off a change of events that have gotten on our nerves quite a bit. Since my wife held these mutual funds in her portfolio before we were married she had to contact her current brokerage firm to change her name on the account so it could be transferred. They were far from helpful and took their own sweet time and requested a lot of proof of marriage. Hopefully the funds will be transferred to own new IRA mutual fund fun by next week. Now the mutual fund where we were simply changing funds within the family were equally as difficult and needed an overabundance of proof of marriage to change her name on the account. Conversely, it was no problem for them to switch for one mutual fund to another–so if they need proof to change the name on the account how can they allow a fund change without that same proof?
We also have a global mutual fund that I like a lot because the managers have been around for decades and they have consistent performance. Now that has not been too great over the last couple years because global funds have skyrocketed and because our fund is more conservative it has not realized all those gains. Anyway, my wife needed to change her name on this account as well. We were not removing our money from the account, but they require a Gold Medallion (basically a Notary Public) on the document proving that she is who she says she is. Normally this would not be a problem, but because we bank through online banks they could not provide this for us. Neither could our brokerage firm–they said they only have that in their headquarters. So we might need to open a bank account at a local bank in order to get this gold medallion to change her name.
All of this has been going on for weeks and has been a pain in the *#&!. Hopefully we can resolve this soon so we can get on with our investment changes. Who knew that changing a name would be so difficult?
Written by Nagel on January 24th, 2007 with no comments.
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The President’s State of the Union Address will reportedly discuss the issue of healthcare in America. It will be interesting to see because it is an expense that most Americans are very concerned–even wealthier Americans. Once issues start affecting the upper-middle and upper classes in America changes can come much quicker than if healthcare was not a concern for the wealthy.
At my old job I was covered, as was my wife, by my company’s health insurance plan. I have switched jobs and the clock is ticking on the remained of days my wife and I will be covered. COBRA does not seem like an option so we are going to talk to ehealthinsurance.com. This site allows you to get quick quotes on all types of health coverage. I have used it in the past in similar situations and I was very pleased. My wife and I only need about a month’s coverage because my new job’s health insurance will kick in at the end of February. I think we can get a catostrophic plan for around $70 a month; and that is all we really need for this time because neither of us have any health conditions that will need coverage.
Last night I called their 800# to sign up for one month of coverage. It was the easiest experience I have had with customer service at any company. I spoke to the rep maybe 3 minutes and he emailed a link immediately. It took maybe another three minutes to fill up and email. I am covered as midnight tonight. That is service.
Written by Nagel on January 23rd, 2007 with no comments.
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