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Why I Canceled American Express Bluebird and Opened a Brokerage Account Instead

On October 9, 2012, I was high on the promise of American Express’ Bluebird prepaid card and “bank account.”  By November 2 of the same year, I had enough, as I mentioned in a comment on my original Bluebird review:

Bluebird is majorly sucking. On Oct. 31, during Halloween Sandy, we received an emergency email from Bluebird support that my wife’s account had been locked for “security reasons.” We decided to spend precious battery time in the middle of a power outage to call and find out what was happening. It turned out someone else was trying to login to her account and instead of locking THEM out, AMEX locked out my legitimate wife from her account! Madness! Terrible security. Why punish the innocent party by making them call in and go through a 15-minute security test when we aren’t the ones causing the login problems?

Just now, we received another freaking email from Bluebird about the same issue! My wife’s account is locked for security reasons! She hasn’t tried to login to her account for days! I’ve been trying to reach AMEX support for 30 minutes. Lines into the Philippines tech support center on this Sunday are clearly not working. What a hassle!

I’m thinking we will have to cancel our Bluebird account.

Today, I made good on my promise and canceled my Bluebird account over the phone — unlike AMEX Serve, Bluebird accounts cannot be canceled online — and the only reason I waited a few days to pancake Bluebird was because I first needed to zero out my balance with an Automated Clearing House (ACH) withdrawal to my bank account, and Bluebird, unfortunately, takes many days to process any ACH transaction.

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Walmart Pepper Spray for the Holidays

How I imagine people getting good deals when shopping before the holidays — researching stores online, finding out about sales, getting coupons, and even getting up a little early to go to a store that is having an early morning sale. How I don’t ever imagine people getting good deals but what one person unfortunately did this holiday season — pepper sprayed people in the face to get the video games she wanted.

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Does Using Coupons Get You Banned from WalMart for Life?

Growing up I used to go to the supermarket with my father just about every week. It was honestly one of the highlights of the week — being able to help my father get good deals on food and things we needed in the home like shampoo and conditioner was a joy. My father had and has a special talent when it comes to collecting coupons and timing their use to maximize their efficiency. There was one trip that really impressed Elizabeth when he had a cart full of goods and watched as the price plummeted down from nearly one hundred dollars to under twenty.

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White is Winsome: Discounting Black Plastic Skin

Walmart are being accused of Racism for marking down a Black Barbie to $3.00USD while selling the White Barbie for the full price of $5.93USD. Some argue Walmart needed to be more sensitive to issues of Race in the marketplace and that the company needs to sell all Barbies for the same amount.  Walmart replied, with a stone ear against a burning fire engulfing them, that they needed to move inventory and the Black Barbies had to be discounted so they would sell better.

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Death at a WalMart Stampede

A WalMart worker was stomped to death yesterday in the opening of a Valley Stream store on Black Friday. 

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Are Nurse Practitioners and Minute Clinics Good Medicine?

The New York Times reports today 43.6 million people in the United States — more than 14 percent of our population — do not have health insurance. Minute Clinic is a for-profit medical office staffed by nurse practitioners and they are located in malls and at places like Wal-Mart and pharmacies like CVS. There are some entities — mainly the American Medical Association — that thinks healthcare options like Minute Clinic are dangerous to your health.

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Wal-Mart Improves

by María L. Trigos-Gilbert

After so MANY nasty e-mails and almost life threats, FINALLY I have decided to write a second article about Wal-Mart, but this time is to congratulate Wal-Mart rather than diminishing this chain of stores. Please, take note that I’m writing this article because I have considered this time to be appropriate. So this article isn’t an apology to Wal-Mart, and this isn’t an apologetic thought to the Wal-Mart’s employees.

On the contrary, I do believe that we have FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Of course, even freedom of speech has its consequences, and that’s right in a democratic system. In the end, the USA’s primary and strong beliefs has been its independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 1st Amendment of the USA’s Constitution.

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