If you think you might have some unclaimed money floating around somewhere, you should check out MissingMoney.com and find out.
tools
Zillow Offers Anonymous Mortgage Shopping
By 4.4.08
Zillow has a new tool for those of you who wish you could do your mortgage shopping while wearing a ski mask and speaking through one of those things that makes you sound like Darth Vader — the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.
By 3.28.08
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Buy It Later is a cool Firefox extension that monitors specific products for you for price drops or for them to come back in stock. [BuyLater via Lifehacker]
Get Info On BPA-Free Baby Products Via Text Messaging
By 3.21.08
If you’ve got a baby and you’re concerned about buying unlabeled products that contain Bisphenol A or BPA—which some studies have indicated may lead to adverse health effects in humans—the website Z Recommends has just launched a free text messaging service that lets you query their database of companies while you’re standing in the store. They’ve also got a printable wallet-card you can carry with you, which serves as both a cheat-sheet for the text service and a quick reference source for major companies.
FDIC Call Center: Former Employee Says It's A Great Place For Bank & Credit Union Info
By 3.13.08
A former FDIC employee writes that the FDIC’s call center (877-275-3342) is “a tremendously helpful place to get basic referral information if you’re having trouble with your bank, lender, or finance company.” They can’t help you with complaints, but they can route you to the correct agency, provide credit union contact info, and give you the names and numbers of state agencies where your bank is located.
Just Shop For Items With Free Shipping
By 3.10.08
Free Shipping On is a new site lets you shop only for stuff with free shipping at Amazon, eBay and tons of other sites.
Use Wildcards In Google To Uncover Company Email Address Formats
By 3.10.08
One of the stumbling blocks when launching an EECB is figuring out the company email address format. There is actually a very easy way to do this. Just use wildcards in Google. What are those? We’ll tell ya, inside…
By 3.10.08
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I tried out Jott this weekend and it’s pretty sweet. It’s a free service that lets you call a number, record a message, and then underpaid workers in India and Africa transcribe your message and email it to you, or to others. [Jott]
Complain Like A Nice Old Man
By 2.29.08
If you want to have a successful complaint, it helps to complain like Gerald. That’s the father-in-the law of this WSJ writer, and he’s able to perform daring feats of consumer action, like the time he got the hardware store to replace the $800 grill that stopped working a year after he bought it. Here’s how he does it:
Get Your Free GrandCentral Number
By 2.29.08
Woohoo, you can now get GrandCentral numbers again. GrandCentral is a great, free, service that lets you create a new phone number that you can have forward to other numbers. Possible uses include: making it so you only have to give out one phone number, using the phone number to mask your real phone number, setting up an internet voicemail box, recording incoming customer service calls, and saving big-time on incoming calls on your Tmobile cellphone.
Find Your Attorney General Or Better Business Bureau
By 2.28.08
Bookmark this: MSNBC has a nice interactive map you can click to find your state Attorney General and/or Better Business Bureau. If a company is being really bad, it’s important to file an official complaint so it’s on the record. If a company gets enough complaints, it can move an AG’s office to investigate. The BBB will sometimes open a hearing in the event of a dispute, and your complaint goes into a publicly searchable database, although the anecdotal evidence supplied by our readers doesn’t paint a very encouraging picture of their dispute resolution process.
CSO Maps State-By-State Data Breach Disclosure Laws
By 2.22.08
CSO has produced an interactive U.S. map that shows what’s required of companies that suffer a data breach in the 38 states that care enough about consumer rights to have passed disclosure laws. Most are modeled after California’s strict SB1386 anti-ID theft law, but now you can tell at a glance what your state is doing about the issue—and in most cases you can click on the icon in the pop-up info box to see a copy of the actual law.
USPS & FTC Mail Out "Avoid ID Theft" Brochure
By 2.21.08
Today we received a handy brochure (PDF) in the mail from the postal service. “Deter, Detect, Defend,” it reads, and it offers a bunch of handy reminders of what to look out for when it comes to protecting your identity, and what to do if you suspect it’s been stolen. If yours was stolen (ha ha, we kid!), you can read read or download it from the FTC’s ID theft website.
By 2.7.08
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¿Dónde está mi reembolso? We don’t speak Spanish, but maybe you do. The IRS’ popular “Where is my refund?” feature is now available in en Español. [IRS]
Easily Compare Wholesale Mortgage Rates Online
By 2.7.08
Mortgage Professor has a great no-frills online tool for tracking the wholesale mortgage rates. Just go here, Select your geographic area, and time period to look at. Choose whether you want your data in chart or table format (I suggest table, as the chart data isn’t as up to date), and what kind of mortgage you want to look at. You can further sort the results by FICO, loan purpose, loan size, type of documentation, or size of down payment. The data comes from Amerisave. A great way to check out mortgage rates, and how strong you have to be to get them. Plus, you can use it to compare how much of a markup your broker is charging.
Opting Out Of Junk Mail Now Free
By 1.14.08
Opting out from the junk mailings will no longer have the onerous cost of $1; the Direct Marketing Association is now offering to not bother you, free of charge! It will, however, require entering a credit card number for identity verification purposes. How nice, we’re no longer being assessed a fee to regain the privacy that was taken away from us. DMA has also added a way to opt-out of the mailings of just certain stores, in case there’s places you like getting promotional material in the mail from.
Finance Website Buxfer Lets You Store Sensitive Data On Your Own Computer
By 1.5.08
With its new Google Gears functionality, Buxfer might finally be the answer for people who want the bells and whistles of an online personal finance website (hello Mint!)—charts, pretty colors, and general infoporn goodness—without having to blindly trust an unknown company with sensitive data such as bank account or credit card numbers (goodbye Mint!). The service uses Google Gears to store account login information and credentials on your own computer, then syncs the data collected with the Buxfer servers, writes VentureBeat.
FeeDisclosure.com Analyzes Mortgage Fees
By 12.24.07
One of the dangers to watch out for when buying a home are the various kinds of fees that can crop up, and comparison shopping these fees is not always easy. Now there’s a new site that gives you a reasonable baseline you can expect, specific to your area and property deal. Input your transaction, property and occupancy type, purchase price, and zipcode, and FeeDisclosure.com will tell what various fees you can expect in getting your mortgage. Much-needed transparency for a notoriously murky and shark-infested industry.
