ATT U-verse Phone Transfer

How to Transfer the Exact ATT Service Plan to a New Person

Go to the ATT Uverse website and try to find a contact phone number.  You’d think the “phone company”  would have a phone number.

I need to transfer an existing phone service into my name for a new business my husband and I are starting.

I went to the support page and found a video (learn more about our new way to connect with us).  A nice looking lady starts talking and says “we know this is frustrating, trying to find the support you need…”  Totally hilarious!

att customer service

She says to pick from the choices on the website below to get connected to the right answers.  Unfortunately there is no option for transferring a service.

I guess this falls under ordering a new service, so I click this.  There are three options for phone service.  Since none of this really matters,  I just want the existing phone to ring at the business when I get there I pick local phone service.

I get a chat box. Fill out a check box form with more choices that don’t apply.

There are always those delays so the responses are sometimes in the wrong spot making the communication more challenging. This is how the conversation went:

AT&T product specialists are happy to assist you with your questions. Click below to begin your live text chat.

Chat representatives will not have access to your personal account. This service is provided to you under AT&Ts Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Hello and welcome to AT&T, my name is Roselyn N.. I specialize in setting up new phone service, Internet, and Digital TV. Please provide me with the complete address where you would like to connect service.

Mary H..: Hello!  How may I assist you today?

Lana: I need to transfer existing service to my name effective 7-30-2013. How do I do this and get any passwords needed to get to voice mail? Also I don’t know exactly what service is there so I will want to know what I’m getting.

Mary H..: Hi Lana! Thank you for being a valued AT&T customer.

Lana: 123 Main St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Mary H.: What AT&T services are you currently enjoying today?

Mary H.: Thank you for providing me with your address.

Lana: I don’t have an account. I want to transfer service from an existing account and get their phone number.

Mary H.: Alright, Thank you for considering AT&T as your service provider. I’d be happy to check the availability of AT&T services at your address.

Mary H.: Please allow me a moment as I check the details at your address.

Mary H.: Congratulations! We offer AT&T home phone, Internet as well as TV service at your address.

Mary H..: Which services are you planning to order today?

Lana: Can the existing services be transferred to me?

Mary H.: Are you referring to transferring your existing phone number to AT&T services?

Lana: What ever the plan is at 123 Main St, keep it the same and transfer it to my name, and please tell me what that plan is. I want to keep that phone number.

Mary H.: Lana, you can transfer an active number to AT&T service.

Mary H.: In order for AT&T to transfer your existing number to our service, it must be a working number.

Mary H.: We offer different plans. I would be glad to assist you in selecting the best similar plan for you.

Lana: The resident at 123 Main St has service with ATT. Can you please transfer that exact service to me. Is that possible?

Roselyn N.: Alright, in that case I would point you in the right direction so you receive the correct resolution to your question.

Mary H.: I understand what you are asking, however my area of expertise is assisting customers as they order new services. I recommend calling our business offices to transfer the services. Representatives there are skilled in assisting with that type of request. Would you like me to provide their contact information?

Lana: OK. That would be great.

Mary H.: Please call our Customer Service Department at 1-800-288-2020. They are open M-F, 8:00am to 5:00pm EST. On Saturday this office will be closed.

Mary H..: I would like to inform you that the person who wishes to transfer the account to your name has to place a request for the same.

Lana: Thank you. Do you have any idea why this information is not posted on the company website?

Lana: That’s good to know. Thanks for that tip!

Mary H.: You are welcome and have a great day.

Mary H.: Thank you for chatting with AT&T today, it has been a pleasure assisting you.  AT&T appreciates your business.  You may click the “Close” button on the chat window to close this chat.

Lana: Is there anything else you think I should know before we end this chat?

Mary H.: Lana, just that the person whose name is on the account to contact our Customer Service department and place a request.

Lesson Learned: Don’t even try to ask for what you want if it is not exactly the topic of what you clicked on at the website.

The 800 number automated service was as confusing as the website, but once I was able to talk to Pablo, he helped a lot.

What you need to do is have the current owner of the service login to their account and find “change responsibilities” somewhere in the account area.  Then (and I will find out next week how this goes) your enter sensitive data and then call ATT back at their 800 number and you’re good to go.

Names and address were changed except for Pablo’s since he was great!

 

How to Start a Business Website

It seems that there a lot of people starting new business lately that want learn how to start a business website.  Well it’s actually quite easy to start a business website but before going to a website builder you should do some research and gather your information.  This will make the process much quicker.

At a bare minimum your website should focus around a few keywords that your customers will probably type into a search engine to find your business.  If your business serves people in a certain city then you can add the city name a part of your website’s main keywords.  For a local business you could pick 5 – 10 keywords that describe the exact services you offer. Stay focused.

Before you start building your business website think about what exactly you want to put on your site about your business and then type up that information in the text editor of your choice.  Use your list of keywords and write about each of those items.  If your business only offers one thing then you only need one article.  Each article shoulf focus on one topic but you can reference other topics if it makes sense.

Once you get your keywords and information for your site you can start thinking about building your actual business website.

There are a lot of business website builders available with hosting services. And there is stand alone software you can use to build your business website then upload it using FTP to your hosting account.

For someone that is probably only going to build one business website and then wants to be able to update it as necessary pick a simple solution with lots of resources available.  WordPress has the capability to create websites really easily.  Here’s how to start a business website with wordpress once you’ve got your information gathered.

Think of a domain name that you like and that is available: YourCoolBusinessDetroit.com and go to Hostgator with a 25% off coupon ThankYou25 (you don’t want to spend too much either).

Sign up for hosting with your domain name.

Go to your cPanel once you’ve gotten your login info.

Find the smiley face icon called Fantastico De Luxe and use it to install WordPress.

how to start a business website

Login to your website and add the material you create as separate pages.

Create a menu, an About Page and a Contact page.

Pick a theme you like and you’re done. Themes are like clothes for your website or decorating you rooms in your house.  They are a quick and easy way to change the look of your website.

Once you’ve done this a few times it gets pretty easy.  That’s why I like to help people build their own small business website.  I started a membership site that covers everything you need to start a business website called Business Website Starter.  Take a look and see if this is something for you. It is reasonably priced.  Individualized help is available too!

 

Hostgator Dedicated Server Review

Hostgator Dedicated Server Review

Choosing the right hosting is critical when it comes to getting your website online. There are a lot of hosting providers operating in the market, but few of them are as reliable and secure as Hostgator for web hosting. Catering to various types of customers, they have the technology and the know-how to provide high levels of service. When it comes to getting the best, though, nothing beats Hostgator dedicated server. This review will explain what it is and the benefits it offers.

What is Dedicated Hosting?

Before we move on to Hostgator, it is imperative that you know what dedicated server hosting is and what it entails. Most providers focus on shared hosting, which is where they lump you in with hundreds of other customers on a single server. It may cost less, but you have limited access to strained resources. Uptime is an issue as well, among other things.

Dedicated hosting, unlike its shared counterpart, is where you have the entire server to yourself. As expected, it costs much more, but only you have access to the resources – no one else. This translates to your website being faster to your visitors; you also have more disk space and bandwidth at your disposal, as well as the fact that you can run more memory intensive applications.

Why Choose Dedicated Hosting? What are its Benefits?

As you have read above, you have access to far more resources in dedicated hosting than is available on shared hosting plans. Without getting technical, let us take a look at how it can be advantageous to you.

  • Security – On shared hosting plans you share the server with others, some of whom may have malicious intent. This is not the case on dedicated servers. There is also the fact that these servers have added security measures that help protect against breaches and other problems that may arise in shared hosting.
  • Flexibility – Having your own server means that you have full control over the hardware and software. This means you have more choice in different areas. You can choose your own operating system, features, hardware, and many other things that are simply not possible in shared hosting, VPS, or other types of hosting services.
  • Scalability – It is easy to switch to a different package or upgrade when the need arises. If you want to run memory intensive applications, you can add more RAM. Need more disk space? Add another hard drive. Want more bandwidth? Buy some. These are benefits that are unheard of in other types of hosting.
  • ServiceYou will be a more important customer as you are hiring an entire server. This translates to a better level of service. Support is better, so any problems are likely to be resolved promptly. Your server is also monitored 24/7, so any issues that may pop up will be fixed quickly.

Choosing Between Windows or Linux

Get 25% off your first payment towards any Hostgator hosting plan.  Use this code Hostgator coupon code when you checkout: ThankYou25

As it stands, Hostgator offers two types of dedicated server hosting Windows and Linux. While the features remain mostly the same, the price difference between the two makes them distinct. So, what separates these two types?

Although Linux is not used widely by home users, it is an excellent operating system for servers. It is praised for offering unparalleled security, speed, and its support for various web technologies and applications that you may need to use. Hostgator’s Linux dedicated server plans come with CentOS with full root access. It is considered one of the best operating systems for servers. You also get CPanel for controlling your server. CPanel is, without doubt, the best control panel in the hosting industry. It is extremely powerful and easy to use, which has made its widespread adoption easy to understand.

If you need alternative applications and technologies such as ASP, ASP.NET, Frontpage Extensions, and Microsoft SQL Database, among others, then Hostgator’s Windows dedicated server plans are for you. They use Windows Server 2008 R2, which is considered one of the best server operating systems in the industry. Their plans come with Remote Desktop as well, enabling you to remotely login to your server and make changes as necessary. Hostgator’s plans also come with IIS web server, SmarterMail Professional Mail Server, and various other Windows-based applications. If you need any of these software or applications then their Windows plans will be great for you.

Hostgator Dedicated Server Pricing Plans

Hostgator offers a number of dedicated server hosting plans suitable for various levels of customers. Their Linux plans start at $174/month, going all the way up to $374. Windows plans cost the same, though fewer resources are provided, most probably due to licensing costs and other factors.

All plans come with Intel quad core processors that offer speed and the flexibility of multitasking. Their lowest plan features Intel Xeon 3360 with 2GB DDR3 memory, dual 250GB hard drives, 10 TB bandwidth, 5 dedicated IPs, and choice of CPanel or Plesk (depending on operating system chosen). This goes all the way up to 8GB DDR3 RAM and dual 500GB hard drives for those who need them.

All of the  Hostgator dedicated server plans are fully managed. You do not have to know about server management techniques. Instead, you get the services of Hostgator’s team that will maintain your server full-time, making necessary tweaks and changes as time goes on. This helps keep your website and server running smoothly and in excellent condition, without you having to worry about anything.

Choosing the Right Plan

Hostgator offers four different plans. If you have a few large websites that do not consume a lot of memory then their Basic plans are great for you. The Standard plans are excellent if you need more bandwidth; the added processing power and RAM will also be useful for memory and processor intensive applications.

The Elite plans are for those who have large databases and need a lot of connections to be run concurrently. You also get more hard drive space, which can be used for backups, among other things. Finally, the Pro plans are perfect for those who face heavy traffic. The added RAM is beneficial for memory intensive applications as well.

Hostgator Support: How Good Is It?

Having read testimonials and reviews around the web, it is clear that Hostgator offers great support for its customers. They are very responsive and will respond to support requests quickly and efficiently. They offer 24/7 support throughout the year via email, live chat and telephone. Hundreds of video tutorials and help articles are provided as well.

I personally use Hostgator and have several plans with them although I do not use dedicated hosting.  I recommend  Hostgator to people I do business with.  I think because they are a serious company and they serve so many people they are committed to doing things right in the first place and succeed.  I also have hosting accounts at  other hosting providers which I will not mention or recommend.  (Perhaps I should to steer you away from them.)

You can always talk to someone at Hostgator.   Sometimes you have to wait a few minutes but once you are with them they stay with you until your issue is resolved.  Their staff helps you with problems even when you are the one causing the trouble.  Their service seems to be quite sound to start with so I never have any trouble with their service.

So, if you are looking for quality dedicated server hosting then Hostgator is a good choice. They offer lots of plans that cater to various needs, offer responsive support, and have fully managed hosting, which means you do not have to worry about running the server by yourself. No matter how large your website is, it will be safe and sound at Hostgator.

Hostgator Dedicated Server Coupon

As an internet marketing consultant I participate in promoting products and services that I think would be useful to my clients.  Here are some discounts you can use if you decide that Hostgator Hosting is the right choice for your business needs.

Get 25% off your first payment towards any Hostgator hosting plan.  Use this code Hostgator coupon code when you checkout: ThankYou25  Example: Prepay for 3 years of  the Business Plan service using the 25% discount code you will save $93.24.

 

Facebook Fans Useless?

How About Those Useless Facebook Fans?

I just read this article over at performinsider.com about useless facebook fans. It referes to a study published by Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science saying only about 1% of Facebook Fans engage with the company they “Like”.

 

 

Researchers for the institute looked at one of Facebook’s own metrics, People Talking About This, the awkwardly-named running count of likes, posts, comments, tags, shares and other ways a user of the social network can interact with branded pages as a proportion of overall fan growth of the top 200 brands on Facebook over a six-week period back in October and they found the percentage of People Talking About This to overall fans to be 1.3%.

If you subtract new likes, which only requires a click and in the minds of the researchers are akin to TV ratings, and isolate for more engaged forms of interaction, you’re left within an even smaller number: 0.45%. That means less than half a percent of people who identify themselves as like a brand actually bother to create any content around it.

 The PerformInsider article is here:

And the original article is here: There are some interesting comments.

So when some of my friends with Facebook business pages say no one comments on their page I’ll just say they are right up there with Coke.

 

Semi Auto Blogging Strategy

Semi Auto Blogging Strategy

I like tools that help blogging and I call this semi auto blogging.  Auto blogging that involves garbled articles for the sole purpose of back links seems like a good way to add entropy to the world wide web.  There’s enough entropy already!

wordpress for blogging

Blogging

So I use tools to help spread the good word around the web.  Here are some simple steps to bring more interested visitors to your site.

1. Start with a good article.  You can hire a good writer and it will be worth it.  Or if you like to talk get a speech to text converter and talk your articles.   This software is very popular Dagon naturally Speaking Home Edition.  Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home, Version 11Voice Recognition Software)

I’ve noticed that my Droid phone also has a speech to text function that work well in a quite environment.

2. Publish your article on your own site and wait until Google indexes it.

3. Publish your article on a few article sites like ezinearticles. Here is a list of the top article directories.

4. Optional – send your article to a blog network like Free Traffic System.  You’ve all heard tha Google has been de-indexing blog networks.  However, if you have good quality content that is used correctly you’ll be OK.  As for duplicate content, the same news stories are floating around everywhere and this doesn’t seem to hurt those big news publishers.

5. Use a service to help send out social bookmarking links for your posts.

Onlywire charges $10 per month and there is an OFFICIAL onlywire wordpress plugin you can use to automate it.  You can get someone on fiverr to set up your account passwords for you for 5 bucks.  Or go with the free version.

SocialAdr is nice because you are getting a bunch of other people to submit your link for you which is really the point. Votes for you page.  You can trade links for free or they have a paid version for the lazy marketer (or the smart marketer).  I love this because it gets real people that are interested in your info to the information you care about.

These semi auto blogging aids should help tell the search engines you have some good content to share.

Lana

Lana

Picture of Lana

Lana

How many people named Lana were named after Lana Turner?  Probably many of us that were born when Lana Turner was popular were named Lana.

But now I’m hearing of other younger ladies with the name Lana. I wonder who inspired the naming of Lana for them?

Why were you named Lana?

HostGator Coupon Code

Here is Your HostGator Coupon

Hostgator coupon code

Here is the HostGator Coupon code:    ThankYou994

I’m always looking for a deal. I use HostGator for my web hosting service.  They are very reliable, and easy to use.  And they have fantastico which allows an easy installation of wordpress.

HostGator shows its prices by the month but actually charges by the year.  That’s how you get a discount.  If you are planning to keep your site up for a while I advise that you buy the three year package up front and secure your domain name for three years also.  There is also a monthly payment option.

PS: I earn commissions when you buy with this HostGator coupon.  Thank you for using it!

Do you want to know why I recommend this? It tells the Google bots or some unknown force tracking the web that you are serious about your business and gives it more credit, or so I’m told.

Check back for other coupons.

Here is the HostGator coupon code that gives you a savings of $9.94 ThankYou994


Professional Headline Generator

1209_e_university_sm
Image by img.mkr via Flickr

I was just updating my Linkedin profile and wondering what to write in the Professional “Headline”:  It seems like I am often a Landlady (or Real Estate Professional) and try as I may that “profession” sucks up a lot of my time.

But I really like to help local businesses get on page 1 of Google because I did it with my local student rental business and it made a huge difference in my stress levels.  I was able to lease all my houses nearly a year in advance with the help of my internet marketing expertise.  No more worrying about leasing my houses.  You can read that local internet marketing story over at Bottom Line Local.

So the focus, in between the rental house management, is to guarantee page 1 on Google for any local business.  I think this is doable since I have the power of Russell Brunsons Dot Com Secrets, The #1 Internet Marketing Company in the World behind me.

Next week we are launching Dot Com Secrets Ann Arbor.  With the Dot Com Secrets powerhouse of internet marketing knowledge and people power anyone wanting to dominate the search engines  can do so with our help.

By the way I found this Linkedin Professional Headline Generator online and I’m going to see what it’s all about.

So the Professional “Headline” for now is “Guaranteed Google Page 1 for Your Local Business”

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How To Make A Backlink

This is the simplest html code for a backlink, also called an anchor text based link.

<a href=”http://thesiteorpageyouwantabacklinkfor.com/maybesomespecialpage/”>The keyword You Want To Rank For</a>

To backlink to  your main page use:

<a href=”http://yoursite.com”>keyword phrase</a>

Note:

If you are going to link back to your main page always use the exact same spelling of your site. These are all different.

http://yoursite.com

http://yoursite.com/

http://www.yoursite.com

Capital letters don’t matter in the primary domain so these are all the same:

http://YourSite.com

http://yoursite.com

http://YOURSITE.com

So you would put this code in a resource box for an article you sumbit to an ezine article directory or perhaps a guest post on another blog.

If you comment on a wordpress blog always fill out the website address and if it looks OK for the name field enter your keyword.

Example:

Basic Code:

Learn how to <a href=”http://bottomlinelocal.com/recommends/get-your-business-on-google-local/”>get your business on google</a> with this step by step guide, <a  href=”http://bottomlinelocal.com/recommends/get-your-business-on-google-local/” >Google Places Revealed</a>.

What it looks like on a web page:

Learn how to get your business on google with this step by step guide, Google Places Revealed.

There are many things you can add to that link code such as open in new window, text formatting, nofollow, but the most important is above.

Why Make A Backlink?

If you want people to find your site in the search engines you’ll need to tell the web crawlers your site exists.  In general more backlinks mean better page rank and more traffic to you page or site.

Need to find good sites for backlinks?  Try this:

Adam Roy’s The Ultimate Backlinks Report

He shows you how to search Google to find high PR sites to leave your best backlinked comments and boost your rankings.

Leave a comment if you have any questions bout this.

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As Good As It Gets Movie Quotes: Noodle Salad

noodle salad
Image by MrTopf via Flickr

So the movie “As Good As It Gets” has so many quotes that seem to resonate with my life, it’s funny.  I’d like to meet the person who wrote it.

Here’s one that rings true when I’m feeling like the grass is greener. It’s about noodle salad.

Carol Connelly: OK, we all have these terrible stories to get over, and you-…
Melvin Udall: It’s not true. Some have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that’s their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you’re that pissed that so many others had it good.

That cracks me up!

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