American Express: Why I'm stopping my new business card today

In May, a representative of American Express cold called me about a new Enhanced Business Gold Rewards Card for my business. I have an American Express business card already which is also my Costco membership card. But Costco is going to end that card in March 2016. I thought a new American Express card for my business would be good to smooth the transition.

When you sign up for a new business card, they can set you up with a bonus program. When I talked to Frederick (not his real name) on July 8, his offer was 25,000 Membership Rewards® Points if I charged $5,000 to the card in three months (91 days). However, my wife had received an offer in the mail from American Express for the same card that offered 50,000 Membership Rewards Points for $5,000 in three months. Of course, I preferred that offer. However, Frederick's supervisor, Jonathan (again, not his real name), was going to make me a great deal: 75,000 Membership Rewards Points if I charged $10,000 in four months (122 days). What's there not to like?

Only one thing: $5,000 in charges in three months is something I can do; $10,000 in four months is unattainable to my business and me. So Jonathan, in his "generosity," set me up to fail and the bottom line is that I will have zero Membership Rewards Points in four months.

Frederick wasn't authorized to change the offer and Jonathan hasn't gotten it done, even though it's been almost a month. Calling American Express customer support was no help; the first call couldn't fix it but gave me a number for New Accounts. I called New Accounts twice. The first time, they said that they had no record of a new card for me. The second time, they said that they were a fraud department and that I had the wrong number. I asked them to give me the correct number for New Accounts and that number couldn't help either (although the representative nicely explained the terms of the bonus program).

Note that, after you get your new card and you set up your account on their web site, there is no mention of the bonus program. You can't see what program you're in or how many charges you've accumulated towards the goal. The only way to get that information is to call them.

Normally I wouldn't post this (it's my word against theirs) except that American Express has recorded every phone call I made to them. They can go back and verify that, yes, Frederick said that Jonathan would reset the offer.

I'm putting this down as bait-and-switch: They dangled one offer in front of me, switched it to a "better" offer that is unattainable then refused to switch it back.

As of today, I am stopping using my new American Express card and will cancel it after I pay the next monthly statement. Stay tuned, because I just may get a call from someone at American Express about this; I will update this post if Amex fixes this situation.

Update August 23: I have just paid the bill for the second month of charges. I feel like I'm dealing with a company stuck in the 1980s. I signed up for 3X points for gasoline charges but there is no indication that they are going to pay me the 3X. Each month, I accrue Membership Rewards Points for charges but they are not actually added to my account until the end of the next billing period. They say that I have to pay the bill to get my points, but the computer doesn't give me the points even after they've posted my payment. It's not until the next statement that I get my points and then the 3X for gasoline are not there.

This has just been a bad experience all around. I wanted to short their stock when it jumped to $81.34 per share on August 11 but I didn't get it done. It's now down 5.3% and going down further, I expect.

Update June 29, 2016: Yesterday, I canceled the account. I will forfeit just over 4,000 bonus points. If the bait-and-switch hadn't happened, I would have had about 60,000 bonus points. (I could have used the points I had but I waited too long.)

Update November 11, 2016: When I canceled the account the representative told me I could contribute the 4,000 bonus points to a charity from a list. He said to watch for two email messages. The messages never arrived. It was a fitting end to a relationship with a sleazy company stuck in the '80s. Today, the stock is down 14% from August 11, 2015 but it has been lower.

Norwood (Ohio) Hometown Fireworks a success

The Norwood (Ohio) Hometown Fireworks was a success once again. Attendance was estimated at 2,500 to 3,000 people. I was delighted to see the large number of small children attending. Here is a picture of the Powerhouse Boogie Band with the sponsor banner. Netburg is proud to have been a Gold Sponsor this year.

Norwood (Ohio) Hometown Fireworks

You're invited to attend the Norwood (Ohio) Hometown Fireworks on Saturday, July 4. Admission is free. Activities begin at 6 p.m. EDT at Shea Stadium, 2605 Harris Ave., Norwood, OH 45212.

Parking at the stadium is limited but there will be extensive parking available nearby. If you have a handicapped placard for your vehicle, please go to the stadium for directions to handicapped parking.

Netburg is one of the Gold Sponsors of this event. We hope that everyone has a good time!

Click here for the full poster (12" x 18", 4 Mbytes, view only).

Updated July 10 with minor changes.

Updated LinkedIn summary

I updated my summary on LinkedIn tonight. Here's the updated version:

Specialization: IBM Power Systems (IBM i, iSeries®, System i®, AS/400®) servers.

I prefer working with real-time (batch is obsolete) systems designed to run continuously 24/7. I also specialize in integrating the IBM i to everything on the plant floor but I’m flexible enough for other tasks as well.

Currently, I’m looking for an opportunity involving an equity investment in a business, in contrast to being an employee or a consultant. Although my experience is in writing real-time programs, my forte is gathering complex information and determining the underlying principles and trends.

Please don’t send me unsolicited ideas as I already have a list of 50+ ideas and I wouldn’t want you to think I stole yours. But if you think I could help you with your business, contact me through LinkedIn, at bruce.hobbs@gmail.com or at bruce@netburg.com.

To be honest, I am growing disillusioned with the IBM Power Systems platform. It’s like a Swiss Army knife, which is both an asset and a liability. The one thing IBM needs to add is the ability to run Windows Server 2012 R2 either natively or through emulation in its own partition. IBM sold its x86 server line to Lenovo and now manufactures nothing that can run Windows Server.

IBM, Power Systems, iSeries, System i and AS/400 are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Netburg is a service mark of Stevens Communications Inc. Netburg is not affiliated with IBM.

Previously, it read:

Specialization: IBM Power Systems (IBM i, iSeries®, System i®, AS/400®) servers.

I prefer working with real-time (batch is obsolete) systems designed to run continuously 24/7. I also specialize in integrating the IBM i to everything on the plant floor. But I do other tasks as needed; I work on everything from hardware to Java. I'm one of the few people who has repaired an IBM disk drive to avoid a full system restore.

If you're looking for someone to improve an accounts receivable report, I can do it but I won't get excited about it. But if you want to be the first plant engineer to install a new type of machine in a group of over 200 manufacturing plants and you need help getting the IBM i to dance, then I could be your person. I don't do 40 hours a week well, but I will be there when the job needs to get done.

Availability for new clients: April 2015.

I recently worked on interfacing the IBM i to two systems, one of which uses SQL Server for its database and one that has an OData connector (here's a shout out to Scott Klement whose information was helpful with both of these interfaces). Both interfaces are running smoothly.

Many years ago, I designed a system to interface an SAP ERP system to bar code readers and process control equipment. This system allows real-time updating of SAP data from these sources outside SAP so that the ERP view is always up to date with the actions on the plant floor. Soon, I will be adding caching so that this system can run independently of SAP for several days with full editing.

I have modified packaged software to allow commission statements to be e-mailed directly to sales agencies with a PDF check image attachment. The payment is made by an ACH transfer.

IBM, Power Systems, iSeries, System i and AS/400 are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Netburg is a service mark of Stevens Communications Inc. Netburg is not affiliated with IBM. zl43x3q

IBM i Technology Refreshes: How do you know which one you have?

Beginning with IBM i version 7.1, IBM has been issuing Technology Refreshes (for example, TR11 for the eleventh refresh). These are different from any other update method previously used by IBM for the i and its predecessors: the iSeries, System i or the AS/400. For some reason, they do not use the modification part of the version for this; all Technology Refresh levels remain at modification level zero (e.g. V7R1M0).

So if you have an IBM i running 7.1, how do you tell which is the latest TR that is installed on your system? Simply run the "Work with PTF Groups" command like this:

WRKPTFGRP PTFGRP(SF99707)

and look at the highest level installed. For 7.1, Level 11, released November 20, 2015, is the latest available with Level 12 coming soon. Here is a screen shot from an actual system showing Level 6 installed:

For a general introduction of Technology Refreshes for 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3, click here.

For the latest installed IBM i 7.2 Technology Refresh, use PTF SF99717. Level 5 was released November 11, 2016.

For the latest installed IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh, use PTF SF99727. Level 1 was released November 11, 2016.

To install the latest TR, do not use the PTFs above. Use the PTFs in the IBM document in the link above. This document also shows you the marker PTFs you can look for.

Let me know through comments if you have any questions about this.

Updated May 23, 2015 to add information about Level 10 for 7.1 and Level 2 for 7.2.

Updated December 2, 2016 with the latest information.

IBM i: Updating DNS without Operational Assistant

There are no native ("green screen") commands to update DNS entries on the IBM i; you must use Operational Assistant. But, for older servers, this can be a problem. For example, I could not get Operational Assistant for V5R4 to load onto Windows 7. And Operational Assistant for V5R4 will not update DNS entries for V4R5. This tip shows you where the DNS entries are stored on the IBM i server so that you can update them yourself.

I'm going to use example.com for my examples as it is a domain name reserved for examples!

For V4R5, the DNS entries for example.com are stored in this file:

/qibm/userdata/os400/dns/EXAMPLE.COM.DB

For V5R4, the DNS entries are stored here:

/qibm/userdata/os400/dns/ns/EXAMPLE.COM.DB

If you use the WRKLNK command, you can look at this file using option 5 or edit it with option 2. Here is an example from a server running V5R4:

 ************Beginning of data**************
;*************************** iSeries Navigator ****************************
;This file was written by iSeries Navigator on Jul 27, 2011
;*************************** iSeries Navigator ****************************
$ORIGIN example.com.
 
(The next two lines are actually one line in the file.)
example.com. IN SOA falcon.example.com.
postmaster.eagle.example.com. ( 1165351125 10800 3600 604800 86400 )
 
IN NS eagle.example.com.
IN NS falcon.example.com.
IN A 93.184.216.119
IN MX 10 example.example.com.imap IN A 192.168.23.10
pop IN A 192.168.23.10
smtp IN A 192.168.23.10
www IN A 93.184.216.119
falcon IN A 192.168.23.15
eagle IN A 192.168.23.10


;*************************** iSeries Navigator ****************************
;; Data from the "Other Records" page
;*************************** iSeries Navigator ****************************
 ************End of Data********************

This file is based on standard BIND format, although the spacing of the blanks is not the same. I'll explain what some of this data means but a full explanation is beyond the scope of this post.

Our example company has two IBM i servers, Eagle (at 192.168.23.10) and Falcon (at 192.169.23.15). Eagle is hosting the mail server, also referred to as imap.example.com, pop.example.com and smtp.example.com. The web site, which uses either a blank server name (i.e. example.com) or the regular name (www.example.com) are hosted outside the firewall at IP address 93.184.216.119. Keep in mind that you will need an entry for each possible system name as DNS will not look further if the name is not present in this table. The exception is the IBM i host table (CFGTCP option 10) which is either looked at first (*LOCAL) or second (*REMOTE), depending on the value in CFGTCP option 12.

This example company did not have a Windows server when this was set up. DNS was set up on both Eagle and Falcon for redundancy and their IP addresses loaded into the firewall as the name servers for DHCP connections. Of course, the reason for doing this is that the DNS entries for servers are different inside the firewall than they are outside. For example, Falcon's IP address outside the firewall might be 93.184.216.120 and Eagle's could be 93.184.216.121.

If you have not used Operational Assistant to set up DNS, I can't help you. This blog post is about changing entries, not setting up new entries. Let me know, through comments or email, if you have any questions.

New office at 3964 Montgomery Road, Norwood (Cincinnati), Ohio

After sign removal and painting. Taken Sept. 14, 2014.

Netburg Services has leased the office at 3964 Montgomery Road, Norwood, Ohio 45212-3720, beginning Sept. 1, 2014. This is located across the street from the United Dairy Farmers Corporate Headquarters and ice cream plant. As we are a small business, there won't be regular office hours so please call for an appointment (513-247-9701). Previous to leasing this office, we were a home-based business. Expect a new sign (instead of a lit blank sign to the left of the door) in November.

Before lease signed. Taken in Aug. 2014.

Courtesy of Google Street View. Taken Aug. 2012.

Updated to include additional pictures Sept. 15, 2014.