What changed in my thinking? Unlike the pool of my youth, this one was self-cleaning and self chlorinating. In other words, it is virtually maintenance free… well almost.

The first year was great. The only maintenance the pool required was occasional skimming of leaves that had gathered on the surface as well as cleaning the skimmer and leaf trapper baskets once a week. The filters are a bit of a chore to clean but that only has to be done twice a year. I can honestly say that in the first year, all my worries about maintaining a pool from my youthful experiences was wiped away.

That changed the second and third years. Year number two brought on problems with high phosphate levels which would not allow the salt chlorinating system to produce enough chlorine to keep the pool’s water in good shape. I would regularly have to add small amounts of shock to the pool just to keep chlorine levels to where they should be. The third year I had problems with algae. This required more chemical treatments and lots of brushing. All the horrid pool memories of my childhood were coming back to haunt me.

At some point, the tile on the spillway for the Jacuzzi began to come off. I started a thread on a local Anthem forum looking for someone who was experienced with pool time. Sam McCraken of Blue Palm Pools answered my post and for about $120, he did a beautiful job repairing the tile. We got to talking about what I did for a living of which I told him that I was a search marketer. This interested him as he had a web site but was not getting any traffic. I explained how my company could help him improve his search visibility which would also help him to attract local traffic.

After some negotiating, we decided to barter. I would provide search marketing services for his site and he would maintain my pool on a weekly basis. I ended up having to completely redesign his site as it was in a crappy GoDaddy content management system, so not only did Sam now have a search marketer looking out for his online marketing efforts, he had a much better looking site that was a whole lot easier to update.

To date, both of us have been very happy about the arrangement. Sam has more business than he can handle right now, which is always a good problem to have. I no longer worry about my pool. In fact I have never enjoyed it so much because I don’t do anything to it anymore except swim in it. I don’t clean skimmer or leaf trap baskets. I don’t brush it. I rarely skim the surface. Most of all, I don’t worry about the chemical balance of the pool. Sam takes care of all those things and does it all very well.

So, if you live in the North Phoenix area and are looking for an awesome Phoenix pool service company, I highly recommend Blue Palm Pools.

I have been received complaints from my HOA because my grass wasn’t green enough, for parking a car on my rockscape in front of our RV gate and even for parking a car on the street in front of our house. Neighbors have reported stories of being cited for not wrapping up their garden hoses properly, leaving garbage cans out when they are supposed to be in and even having as little as 5 teeny tiny weeds in their front yard yard. However this weekend was the epitome of an HOA going too far.

My wife decided to have her third garage sale in our six years of living up here (the last one was supposed to be the last – yeah right). To help market the sale, she placed ads on Craigslist as well as our own community forum, AnthemStuff.com. Even with the ads, you need some signage to direct people in as this is a pretty large community. So we purchased some of those inexpensive but professional looking yellow garage sale signs available at the local Home Depot along with wooden stakes to drive them into the ground. No cheesy looking boxes with hand written lettering or duct-tapped poster board to poles or street signs. These are nice looking signs that are not only professional looking but actually do a great job of drawing people in.

The sale was planned for Friday and Saturday of last week. We got an early start at 6am where I proceeded to place about 8 signs around our immediate area. I don’t think an hour passed before a customer asked us why we did not have any signs directing people in (they came by the Craigslist ad). I thought that they must be blind. These signs are yellow and stand out pretty well. How could they not see them? I jumped in the car to check it out and sure enough, about half of my signs were gone. At first I though it was kids walking to school or maybe competing sellers. I quickly replaced them and returned to the house.

Being diligent, I thought I’d check them a half hour later. More signs gone, including one of our friends real estate sandwich style signs that run about $50. She had placed another one further away from our location so I thought I’d rescue that one before it was stolen as well, however when I arrived, it was gone as well. Who would steal our signs in this manner? It can’t be kids. I wouldn’t think competing garage sellers would be that devious.

To make a long story short, I lost about 15 signs over the two days. Who stole them? Our lovely HOA. Apparently they don’t like them because they mess up the community. So rather than try to discover who is placing these signs and asking them to remove them, they simply steal them without giving you any notice.

We discovered it was the HOA because our Realtor friend called the them and asked them point blank if they had taken them to which they replied that they had. I also discovered that this happens quite often to anyone who has garage sales in this community. Therefore if you live in this HOA or one similar to it, better make sure you have an abundance of cheap signs so you can replace them throughout the day.

If you ask me, it is going a bit overboard. Let’s face the facts: We as Americans buy too much stuff, stuff we eventually don’t want or need anymore and stuff we have to get rid of. Therefore garage sales will always be with us, no matter what type of community you live in. What our HOA should do (if they were smart) would be to develop some standardized signs in which they could then rent or loan to sellers. This way, the HOA knows about it, they avoid tacky looking boxes and signs lying around all over the place and the community can function in a normal fashion. They have already standardized real estate signs such as “For Sale” or “Open Hose” signs. Why not garage sales as well?

One positive thing I did take away from this experience is that if you have any large boxes, pieces of plywood and the like that you want to get rid of, but they either won’t fit in the trash or you don’t feel like taking them to the dump, just write or paint “Yard Sale” on them and place them on the corner of one of your streets. The HOA is happy to dispose of them for you at no cost.

Note: This entry was originally published on my personal blog.

The first year was great. The only maintenance the pool required was occasional skimming of leaves that had gathered on the surface as well as cleaning the skimmer and leaf trapper baskets once a week. The filters are a bit of a chore to clean but that only has to be done twice a year. I can honestly say that in the first year, all my worries about maintaining a pool from my youthful experiences was wiped away.

That changed the second and third years. Year number two brought on problems with high phosphate levels which would not allow the salt chlorinating system to produce enough chlorine to keep the pool’s water in good shape. I would regularly have to add small amounts of shock to the pool just to keep chlorine levels to where they should be. The third year I had problems with algae. This required more chemical treatments and lots of brushing. All the horrid pool memories of my childhood were coming back to haunt me.

At some point, the tile on the spillway for the Jacuzzi began to come off. I started a thread on a local forum looking for someone who was experienced with pool time. Sam McCraken of Blue Palm Pools answered my post and for about $120, he did a beautiful job repairing the tile. We got to talking about what I did for a living of which I told him that I was a search marketer. This interested him as he had a web site but was not getting any traffic. I explained how my company could help him improve his search visibility which would also help him to attract local traffic.

After some negotiating, we decided to barter. I would provide search marketing services for his site and he would maintain my pool on a weekly basis. I ended up having to completely redesign his site as it was in a crappy GoDaddy content management system, so not only did Sam now have a search marketer looking out for his online marketing efforts, he had a much better looking site that was a whole lot easier to update.

To date, both of us have been very happy about the arrangement. Sam has more business than he can handle right now, which is always a good problem to have. I no longer worry about my pool. In fact I have never enjoyed it so much because I don’t do anything to it anymore except swim in it. I don’t clean skimmer or leaf trap baskets. I don’t brush it. I rarely skim the surface. Most of all, I don’t worry about the chemical balance of the pool. Sam takes care of all those things and does it all very well.

So, not only do I love my pool guy but I love barter relationships. I did a similar barter this year for sun screens and have bartered in the past for tile floors throughout my first home. Oh, and I regularly barter for wine.

Some of the things I am currently looking to barter for include the following:

• Wrought iron security entrance to home.
• Landscape maintenance
• Auto mechanic to replace front and rear seals for my Mustang’s 289
• Video surveillance

I could probably go on but those are some of the top things on my wish list. So if you happen to do business in my general area and want to barter for search marketing services and/or web development, just let me know. Furthermore, if you live in the North Phoenix area and are looking for an awesome pool maintenance company, I highly recommend Blue Palm Pools.

Note: This entry was originally published on my personal blog.

I called them of course to see if there was some error. It is not that I will have any difficulty in paying it. I was just concerned that there had to be some error and I hate wasting money. They informed me that I had indeed used the electricity. Even when I suggested the meter may be faulty, they implied that it would send them a signal, of which it did not. Bottom line is that I have nothing to complain about.

This is not my reason for this post and especially what I decided to title it. There are three “other” things that tick me off a bit which is my reason for writing an “APS Sucks” type of post.

1. The Extensive List of Charges

The APS bill provides a “line-item” list of charges that reads like the options you see when buying a car. I have never really paid much attention to this untill now of which I was quite shocked. Here is what it looks like.

• Basic Service Charge – The minimum charge for having service available, whether you used electricity or not.

• Delivery Service Charge – A charge, based on your kWh usage and/or kW demand, to build and operate the equipment for delivering electricity to your home/business, including lines, poles, transformers and substations.

• Environmental Benefits Surcharge – A charge to cover the costs of programs approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission, including: energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

• Federal Environmental Improvement Surcharge – A charge to recover a portion of the cost of investments and expenses for environmental improvements at APS’ generation facilities designed to comply with environmental standards mandated by federal laws or regulations.

• Competition Rules Compliance Charge - A charge, based on your kWh usage, to cover costs associated with compliance and implementation of the Electric Competition Rules.

• System Benefits Charge – A charge to cover the costs of programs approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission, including low-income assistance, demand side management, customer education, environmental, renewables, long-term public benefit research and development, nuclear fuel disposal and nuclear power plant decommissioning programs as well as other programs approved by the Commission.

• Power Supply Adjustment * - An adjustment mechanism to recover fluctuations in fuel and purchased power costs. (i.e., fuel, natural gas)

• Metering * – A fixed fee for providing and servicing the meter.

• Meter Reading * – A fixed fee to determine your energy usage.

• Billing * – The cost of calculating and providing your monthly statement.

• Generation of Electricity * – The cost of producing the electricity you used this month.

• Transmission and Ancillary Services * – The cost for moving high voltage electricity from generating facilities and other sources to the APS distribution lines

• Transmission Cost Adjustment * – A cost, based on your kWh usage, to adjust for annual changes in transmission-related costs procured to serve retail customers.

• Franchise Fee - A charge by a municipality for APS’ use of the public rights-of-way for its facilities.

• Regulatory Assessment – A cost imposed on customers of state regulated utilities to help fund the Arizona Corporation Commission and Residential Utility Consumer’s Office.

Oh, and let’s not forget about good ol’ Uncle Sam. He has to have his cut as well.

• State Sales Tax
• County Sales Tax
• City Sales Tax

Now I can understand the Basic Service Charge, Generation of Electricity, and the taxes but what about all the rest of these charges?

Take the Delivery Service Charge for example which allows them to collect additional fees from me so they can build and operate the equipment for delivering electricity, including lines, poles, transformers and substations. This is so bogus. How many companies do you know of charge their customers additional fees so they can build and maintain the methods they use the goods and services customers seek? It would be like Wal-Mart charging me an extra fee on top of the cost of goods sold so they can not only maintain their stores but build new ones as well. Isn’t that what profits are for?

There is the Competition Rules Compliance Charge which charges me an extra fee so they can compete? WTH? At least that is the way I read it.

Why do I have to pay extra for the System Benefits Charge? What do programs for low-income assistance, customer education, long-term public benefit research and development and others have to do with me, especially if I am not using them?

The Transmission and Ancillary Services really gets me – an extra fee for moving high voltage electricity from generating facilities and other sources to the APS distribution lines. What do they have to ship the electricity or move it in trucks? Another bogus charge

On top of all these “extras” I have to pay APS extra so they can measure how much electricity I use and so they can bill me. Isn’t this simply a cost of doing business.

How the Arizona Corporation Commission ever approved all these “extra” charges is beyond me. I mean, does this commission have any real concept of business in the real world?

2. You Can Choose Another Electrical Provider, So Long As It Is APS

You might wonder what the asterisks are for in the line-item list above. They indicate that “the services are currently provided by APS but may be provided by a competitive supplier.” This is more of a taunting however as there is no other provider where I live. APS is the sole provider – a monopoly.

So why even taunt me like that? Reminds me of when Henry Ford starting making the Model T and offered consumers the choice of any color “so long as it is black.”

3. They Waste Money They Could Be Giving Back To Their Customers

I very often see commercials for APS on my television. Everyone knows how expensive television commercials are. They do other advertising besides all of which is ironic due to the fact that most of the areas they supply electricity to, they are the sole provider.

I completely understand why companies have marketing budgets and advertise – because there is competition. However, in APS’s situation, the only competition they have, at least where I live is NOBODY. There is of course another major electrical provider in the Valley – SRP, but as far as I understand, APS has their power grids and SRP has theirs . So where is the choice? And what is the purpose of wasting tens of thousands if not millions of dollars on ad spend when people HAVE TO use their service? It’s pure stupidity and waste , all of which are passed on to the consumer.

So what can I do about this? Nothing really.

I am starting to think very seriously about solar power and may be exploring how I can outfit this home so that it is completely powered by the sun. If not this one, certainly the next. I do live in the desert so why not take advantage of natural energy as opposed to making a company like APS richer and richer.

In the meantime, APS – you suck, not only for wasting money on advertising, money that could be put back in our pockets in the form of savings, and not only for lying to us that we can choose another provider when the exact opposite is true but most of all for sticking us with just about every bogus add-on fee you can get away with.

Note: This entry was originally published on my personal blog.