How Do Bloggers Use Their Credit Cards? Read on…

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Ages ago, I posted a reply to a request from Mr. Credit Card’s survey. I’d forgotten all about the survey until I received this email announcing his results: It’s worth reading, and great link bait. As is his follow up post on the bloggers involved!

Mr Credit Card here.

During March and April, I sent out an email to do a credit card survey. In fact, I sent out to over 150 pf bloggers. 45 of you have responded to the survey and I want to thank all of you for that.

But first, I want to apologize for taking so long to publish the results. There were several reasons. Firstly, I sent a few reminders to the people I sent the survey to and this took a while. Then, when I upgraded to Wordpress 2.5.1, I could not load any images (and I had to for this survey). My full-time work also got in the way.

Having said all that, I have published the results. I want to thank you all once again. In return for participating in this survey, I will mention your blogs in a special post tomorrow (hint : it’s not just a post full of links).

So watch out for my emails again tomorrow. And I hope you learnt something from this survey.

Regards – Mr Credit Card

And…

As a way of saying thank you to all of you, I have actually written a follow post that briefly describes you and your site and I’ve picked what I thought to be the best or most interesting credit card post you have written on your blog. I’ve named the post “Ultimate Collection of Credit Card Posts” – (well, maybe I’m exaggerating, but hey – it’s all of your post!).

Thanks once again. And I would appreciate if you could spread the word about the survey and the collection of cc posts. I’ve certainly learnt a lot from this and I might just write up my thoughts on how we could collectively make better use of our cc in a post tomorrow.

So watch your emails again!

Regards, etc..

If you’re interested, check out one of my favorite Credit Card Posts on this blog (I do have tons in the archives on Credit Cards!).

Happy Blogging, and keep that credit card tucked away!

Asus Eee 1000 PC – Available and Affordable!

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Oh, and what’s this I see? It’s the new Asus Eee PC 1000 running Windows XP SP2 (or 3?) in Chinese. It has an installed 80GB hard disk (not SSD) and seemed plenty quick even for my tastes. In fact, I tried the keyboard, too and found that it was quite pleasant to use. Priced at around NT$18,500, too.

Asus Eee PC 1000

It sported the new Intel Atom Chip at 1.6Ghz with a 10″ TFT screen at 1024X600 WVGA card. On board memory included 1GB DDRII, and 80GB (SATA). I also managed to find several other UMPCs at the new Kuang Hua Market in Taipei.

Ovation Credit Services: Does it deserve a standing ovation?

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After yesterday’s post on the credit card habits of bloggers, and the results of the survey, a staggering 23% of the bloggers did not know their FICO score. While I’m sure that this was at least partly because some of us lived outside the US, I wondered why the others did not check.

In this paid post I look at checking your credit rating through one particular website, and answer one simple question: how easy or difficult is it to do this the first time? Welcome to Ovation Credit Services, a website that specialises in finding and repairing credit reports so that clients get a better deal when they want to purchase that LCD TV or new 4×4!

ovation credit services

Finding information

To start this process, let’s see how you would go about finding out about information about credit scoring: Ovation provides extensive learning pages through the menu on the top right including, downloadable books, videos, a glossary, and general information pages. While there’s no mention of the individual credit reporting services, there is a general description of how the websites calculate your actual credit score and the weightings used, the various laws, and general customer queries.

The Website: Speedy, Responsive and Lots of Trust Building

Clicking through the website extensively to provide this review, I noted that the website is responsive, and fast. In fact, the homepage is quite large, but when saved to my disk only showed 257Kb. That size means that the website should load quickly even on slower or dialup connections. Each page loaded smoothly, and I didn’t find any out of date links at all. Moreover, I was surprised at how smooth the website seemed in Firefox. It’s important that websites adequately cover the major browsers, and it’s amazing how many sites don’t even bother with making their site compatible with the #2 browser.

In addition, it was easy to access the Privacy Policy, Disclaimers, Terms and so on, each of these was clearly linked in the footer of the page (which is where I found one non-active link under “Credit News”). The website has gone to a lot of trouble to enhance its reputation and trust with a number of features: including a no-risk refund policy, special deals, BBB credits and links to its record on BBB which is where you find out that the business started in 1976.

Loose Ends: Crowded HomePage and out of date blog

There are also a number of ways to contact the company, including a snail mail address, a telephone number and online chat, all of which add to the impression that this is a solid company with a reputation. However, there are some loose ends, including a blog that seems to be linked to some pages of the website: at Credit Repair Blog. It looks like the blog hasn’t been updated in about a year. Having worked with a blog on a credit card website before, they can be very useful to draw additional traffic and rankings to your main site, and such results can be very effective if the blog is written well. I’d strongly suggest reviving the blog and integrating that to the main site.

I also feel that the frontpage is really trying to do TOO much as there are 15 clickable boxes below the graphic above. I like the way the boxes light up when users mouse over them, but that there is too much there and this suggests perhaps a lack of focus at the moment on exactly WHO is going to use the website. I’d suggest trimming this area to just seven: the five boxes in the first row, the last page wide box, and all the others can be moved to a slideshow area where users click arrows to see the next offer situated where “No Risk Refund” is currently.

And so,…

In conclusion, though this service is not cheap and may not be suitable for all those who need good credit reporting, the website goes to some lengths to create both an impression of trustworthiness and value for money. I’d like to take a look around inside the site and the report areas to see what they have to offer. I’ll be contacting them to find out more. So stay tuned.

Sponsored by Ovation Credit Services.