12.14.07
Posted in San Pedro Belize at 12:31 pm by admin
Who I Recommend
When you go to Belize you will discover that a golf cart rental is a fun way to go about your trip there. Having a golf cart is in no way necessary but it will make the trip a little more convenient. We actually walked everywhere for most of the trip but eventually resorted to renting a golf cart from a place near the airport. We rented golf carts from Captain Morgan’s and Cholo’s. I recommend both of these companies as we had absolutely no issues with either company and I never felt like I was being swindled and I got a great deal on the carts. One way to get a good deal on rentals is to get a promotional referral from a hotel or resort near by. You can usually get the cart for much cheaper by going through a referral.
Who I Don’t Recommend
I don’t recommend Island Tour Rentals. This company is next to the large pink grocery store and is owned by the same family. They have been written about extensively on Belize message boards by multiple people claiming to have been scammed or overcharged by them either with their golf cart rental or when buying groceries. A recent incident from this year is the most disturbing of all. The golf cart rental company had a little knowledge of how the courts work in Belize and held an American couple hostage in Belize through a court order. With the couples young kids at home they had to stay in Belize until the government allowed them to leave.
The story goes like this: An American couple who loves San Pedro Belize and vacation here often rented a golf cart from Island Tour Rentals for 1 week. One of the days a dog was chasing the cart and growling and appeared like it was trying to bite their feet so they swerved to get a way from the dog and tipped the cart. Some locals came and helped tip the cart back upright and they were on their way again. They noticed it had caused some superficial damage to the cart and went immediately to the cart rental company to report the damage.
Island Tours immediately estimated the damage to be $12,000 in Belize dollars. They said the chassis was damaged and so the entire cart would need to be sold for parts and scrapped. There was mud on the chassis which made it to where you could not even see the chassis so there would have been no way to detect if the chassis was in fact damaged or not. The estimate of damages seemed to have been pulled right out of their exteriors. The police came by and estimated the damages to be $1,000 and two other mechanics estimated the damages to be $900 and $560. Not one of the mechanics or the police mechanic found any sign of chassis damage. The police took the credit card slip from the golf cart rental company and told them to not charge them for any damages until it has been investigated. The cart company went ahead and charged their card for $6,000 anyway.
As the story moves on, the cart company sues them for damages and the Belize government forces them to stay in Belize until the court case has been settled. If this were to go to the Supreme Court in Belize the couple could stand to have to stay in Belize for 1 -3 years until the case is decided. Fortunately the San Pedro business community rallied behind Sandra and Norman Warren and wrote the Belize Tourism Board requesting they make a decision on the matter expeditiously so that the Warrens can go back home with their children. Amazingly the San Pedro Business Association and community, realizing the golf cart company was trying to scam some tourists, put up the needed $8,000 security deposit showing that the couple was in good faith to pay if the cart really was in need of this amount of repairs.
Having the money secured in good faith in a bank account allowed the government to give the go ahead for the couple to go home and await the trial whenever that may actually happen. The trial has not yet been held but we believe that the couple will more then likely only need to pay around $1,000 rather then the amount of money Island Tours tried to extort from them.
Tell Us Your Story
If you would like to give us your own story of how your good or bad experience went with a particular Golf Cart rental in San Pedro then please send us your comment. We would like to know.
You can write Island Tour Rentals showing your support for the couple and your unwillingness to ever shop at their grocery store or rent a golf cart from them again by emailing them at this address:
Store: Island Tour Rentals
Manager: Karol Maldonado
Email: ilandtourrental@btl.net
You can read more about this story here: Ambergris Caye, San Pedro Daily, and San Pedro Sun
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12.13.07
Posted in Affordable Belize Accomodation, Belize Hostel at 11:16 am by admin
Fun Without The Danger
Belize has an amazing amount of variety and natural things to explore. If you are used to taking a vacation and then walking around in store after store not really trying anything new then I would definitely recommend you give Belize a try. The country of Belize is a British Colony but has since been made independent. They still have the queen on their currency and pride themselves on being America’s friends. This means safety for you and your family. The country is very compatible for families who need an exotic location to go for vacation without all the danger.
Where To Go In Belize
If you want an idea of where to stop off to begin with I would go to Belize City and take a ferry over to San Pedro island. Keep in mind that you will hear from people that San Pedro is the expensive island. When tourists and the locals say this they are meaning the accommodations are expensive. One thing you can do to offset the expense of a hotel room is to stay about 5 minutes (walking distance) offshore by walking over to Pedro’s Inn. You can sleep there and then in the morning walk right up to one of the best spots on the beach everyday and it only takes about 5 minutes. The stroll to the beach is quite nice and you will pass several shops and delicatessens on the way to your swim in the crystal blue water. When you jump into the ocean don’t be surprised to see all kinds of marine life swimming around you. Don’t worry as there is nothing dangerous, you will just see a variety of beautiful colored fish.
While you stay on San Pedro I would recommend taking some snorkeling tours a couple times. You will have so much fun and see a variety of water life and coral reefs. Belize has the 2nd largest coral reef in the world so you will not be disappointed. If you can find a kayak rental you can canoe yourself right on out to the reef and anchor it. You can then get out and swim at your leisure while you come back for a packed lunch when you get tired enough for a snack.
This is only the beginning to a fun vacation in Belize as you will have other opportunities as well. You can go caving and look at ancient Mayan ruins and skulls, or you could go check out the Mayan pyramids in the jungles of Belize. Stop by a tour guide shop and you will see enough expeditions to last you a few months. Pick a couple of the popular ones by asking several tourists as well as locals which ones they prefer. There is nothing better then getting the advice from someone who has actually done what is being advertised. My wife would recommend the butterfly garden in San Ignacio. If you are a fan of butterflies then you will not want to miss this place. They have a museum of the Mayan culture and history as well as an outdoor room full of butterflies.
If you happen to stay at Pedro’s Inn in San Pedro Belize let Peter know Donny sent you. It is the best Belize Hostel by far and I’m talking from 3 weeks experience staying there in my cool air conditioned room drinking bananna shakes and eating my Pedro’s Inn pizza’s from their delicous pizzeria. Their Pizza is amazing, at least stop by and give it a try and come back here and comment on how you liked it.
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10.16.07
Posted in Blood Diamonds, diamonds at 10:26 am by admin
By having Africa cut and polish their own rough diamonds it makes good business sense. The thinking about this is split as many believe that cutting in India and China is cheaper but De Beers argues that by creating more jobs in Africa will stabilize the country and those cities that are involved in the diamond industry and will ultimately have a positive affect on the African economy.
Rough Diamonds
De Beers currently controls about 40% of the diamond market and takes proactive steps to make sure conflict free diamonds or blood diamonds do not make it into their supply of diamonds. De Beers has requested places like New York where the Gemstone industry is the strongest to help in training the African countries in learning how to polish and cut diamonds. De Beers request to have the New York gemstone industry teach the African communities and businesses about polishing and cutting makes it even clearer just how much New York has control of the wholesale diamond market. In order to buy diamonds at wholesale prices you must be in touch with the diamond suppliers in New York as well as the GIA certification companies in this city.
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09.14.07
Posted in True Wholesale Diamonds, diamonds at 4:21 pm by admin
How To Buy Diamonds At Wholesale Prices
No this is not a marketing gimmick as you will see there are many many of them as you search for wholesale diamonds on the internet. There are so many advertisements and diamond portals that link up to the same typical diamond retailer that would never sell you a wholesale diamond that it is enough to make your head spin. This articles intent is to make it simple for you to bypass the multiple pages on Google and Yahoo of spam and fake online diamond discount stores.
First Step
It is very simple; you need to go to at least 3 different diamond retailers in your town. You will receive a card that has the 3 C’s (Carat, Cut, Clarity). You use this card to find the diamond of the quality you are interested in. The card will be free so you can take it with you to the other stores. A few stores you could go to are Walmart, Sam’s Wholesale Club, and James Avery. These are stores in my town but you will probably have similar stores or a local jeweler will do the trick. You need to write down the price of the diamond, the color, cut and clarity. In the end of the process you will use this to make a comparison chart. One other thing to ask the store is if the diamond is GIA certified. Any other certification claim is an appraisal and not an actual certification of the diamonds quality. Why is this important? If it isn’t GIA certified, the diamond retailer could be giving you a wrong estimate of the diamonds quality. GIA certified diamonds are more expensive and are not in most stores but if you can you want to give extra weight to these diamonds as they can be guaranteed on the quality.
Chances are that after leaving these stores with notebook in hand with the 3 C’s and the questions you have asked on the paper you will be asked back in. The store owner will give you a cheaper price quote as he will see you are a serious buyer. Take advantage of this as it will get your diamond price closer to the current diamond retail price. Cross out the previous price and right the new price.
Next Step
You now want to get on Craigslist.com. Why not eBay? You want to avoid eBay as there are many stores selling clarity enhanced diamonds. This is where they inject glass into a flawed diamond so that it looks as if it has no flaws. The ones that are selling genuine quality diamonds are also suspect as the auction will usually go up at the end suspiciously beyond a reasonable eBay auction price. Many of these stores hook potential buyers into the auction only to bid on their own auctions to hike the price to their acceptable selling price. This practice is against eBay’s rules but it happens all the time. Craigslist.com is a free local listing classifieds site for all major cities in the U.S.A. You will find many previously engaged people on here with “I don’t want it anymore syndrome”. You can take advantage of this psychological principle. These people want to get rid of some bad memories and will likely sell the diamond for $1,000 - $2,000 off what they paid for it. Now I know what you are thinking, “I don’t want a used ring” Keep reading as this will not end in you buying a used ring.
You buy the ring off of Craigslist.com for a discount after measuring it with the prices and quality criteria on your chart. You want to buy a GIA certified ring if possible and you want the original receipt. Many diamond jewelry stores will allow you to trade in a GIA certified diamond ring for a ring of 20% or greater in value. Verify the store and receipt and make sure they have this policy in place before buying it from the seller on Craigslist.com. Now all you need to do is trade in your discounted ring in for a ring of your choice of 20% or greater value.
Summary
You have now found out how to successfully buy a wholesale diamond ring at current diamond prices while avoiding the marketing hype offered on several diamond stores on the internet. This method is fool proof so long as you follow my suggestions. You will save thousands of dollars and the diamond you choose will be your choice and may even allow you to buy the diamond ring you wanted but just couldn’t afford.
About The Author
Donny is a diamond expert having been involved in buying diamonds and working with gemologists for 5 years. He has valuable industry experience in the diamond retail field and has written several articles on the subject of diamonds and diamond prices.
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08.30.07
Posted in True Wholesale Diamonds at 1:01 pm by admin
If you look on the internet and do a search for wholesale diamonds or discount diamonds you end up finding quite a lot of spam or websites hiding their own agenda within somewhat informative material. I began to pull my hair out trying to find a purely informative diamond site that had no alternative marketing agenda.
So what did I find out after searching through the first 10 pages of Google search results for diamonds?
I was able to find craigslist advertisements for some people who were recently engaged and now need to get rid of their diamond ring. This was helpful information but there was still a small problem. The guarantee that you are getting a legitimate quality diamond ring is sketchy at best. As far as you know the craigslist seller could have put a low grade diamond in the ring while claiming it is a certified quality diamond.
In order to get around a possible scam I filtered through to those rings that have a GIA certified slip with the diamond. There of course is still the possibility that a switch was made and they are just giving you the GIA certificate of the diamond they are now keeping for themselves.
The secret when buying diamonds from a regular Joe off of Craigslist
Then I ran across a policy that many legit diamond stores offer. The policy goes something like this, “You may return your ring at anytime for a ring of 20% or greater value.” This means you could potentially buy a GIA certified deeply discounted diamond ring along with keeping the previous owner’s receipt from the diamond store they bought it at and exchange it for a more expensive ring. That means you could buy a .75 karat diamond ring for $2,000 off what they paid for it and exchange it for a 1 Karat diamond solitaire ring probably around the cost of the .75 karat diamond ring. You can do this simply because you bought it from someone with an “I don’t want it anymore syndrome” attitude. They just had their engagement broken off and they don’t want the memory of, just being rejected, by a very expensive ring sitting on their dresser. If they can sell it to someone at a $2,000 loss they will do it.
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08.22.07
Posted in Traveling Magazine Sales, Traveling Sales Group at 3:04 pm by admin
An interview with a traveling magazine salesman
I ran into a magazine sales guy today at my apartment. He came by and knocked on the door and had a clever sales pitch. One of the pitches was that the money could be donated to a charity of my choice. They basically work in every possible angle to sale you a magazine. I was really interested in this group because an old friend had been in one of these groups a long time ago and said it was a drug and alcohol infested type of organization usually and that it was a terrible influence on the young kids who travel with these magazine sales companies.
What do you like most about the magazine sales group?
“Mainly traveling and seeing new places across the country. Not so much the money.”
What is the name of the magazine agency?
“I cannot tell you, they may track this information back to me.”
Do they provide alcohol or drugs and other perks?
“They do not provide drugs alcohol or parties at all.”
What are the ages of the sale people?
“Age range is 18 - 27″
What is the background of the sales people?
“Most have graduated highschool. Some are highschool drop outs.”
How long do the sales people do this for?
“Maximum about 4 years. I have been doing it only 4 months.”
What is your boss like?
“He has been doing it for 30 years and owns the business. He has 1 kid and is divorced. The business is with the BBB.”
How many are in the crew?
“There are 20 people in the crew and they drive two vans out of their hub hotel location in Lousiana each day.”
How much does your boss make?
“I have no idea how much he makes.”
What are the perks?
“No other perks besides the travel.”
Where do you stay?
“We stay in nice hotels throughout the country, 2 per room.”
Do they provide a script and can you make up your own script?
“They give a basic 5 step script but they want you to stick to the NCA contest, $1,000 to a positive career goal and a trip.”
Is the boss a demanding controlling sales manager?
“The boss tries to be upbeat and positive and they are not a scam operation.”
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08.06.07
Posted in How to remove the Smitfraud-C Virus, Smitfraud-C, Smitfraud-C Removal at 4:37 pm by admin
1. Download this file - Combofix
2. Double click combofix.exe & follow the prompts.
3. When finished, it shall produce a log for you. Post that log in your
reply to these instructions.
Note:
Do not mouseclick combofix’s window whilst it’s running. That may cause
it to stall.
After you have run combofix and have followed the instructions above, download this file to your desktop: Combofix script
Drag and drop this script file onto the Combofix application as the image shows you.
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08.05.07
Posted in How to remove the Smitfraud-C Virus, Smitfraud-C, Smitfraud-C Removal at 3:03 am by admin
The latest Smitfraud-C spyware virus issue has a new removal instructions
Follow the Vundofix at the bottom of this page to fix the issue
The latest variant of Smitfraud C may not change your screen saver or background but it will install some softwae that will cause webpages to randomly appear as you browse the web. Some of the pages are www.broadcaster.com and a winpcdoctor virus remover site. Several other virus removal webpages come up and some ask you to pay for their program to remove this spyware and virus trojan at an unrealistic price.
The spyware trojan virus basically holds your computer hostage with annoying pop ups until you pay to have it removed using their software.
Lots of the Removal tools out there for this are outdated and no longer work. Even the manual removal instructions available on the internet are no longer relevant to the latest variant.
These instructions work as of August 2007 in removing the Smitfraud-C Spyware program that has been lately propagated via spam email across the internet. Many of the spam mails are labeled postcard or someones name along with a pdf file.
Please download VundoFix.exe to your desktop.
- Double-click VundoFix.exe to run it.
- Click the Scan for Vundo button.
- Once it’s done scanning, click the Remove Vundo button.
- You will receive a prompt asking if you want to remove the files, click YES
- Once you click yes, your desktop will go blank as it starts removing Vundo.
- When completed, it will prompt that it will reboot your computer, click OK.
- Please post the contents of C:\vundofix.txt.
Note: It is possible that VundoFix encountered a file it could not remove. In this case, VundoFix will run on reboot, simply follow the above instructions starting from “Click the Scan for Vundo button.” when VundoFix appears at reboot.
Please also post a fresh HijackThis log. There may be some more left overs to clean up with HijackThis, but we can deal with that when you post a fresh log file.
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08.02.07
Posted in Digg, Digg Conspiracy at 1:58 pm by admin
Digg user makes $100,00 a year “digging” articles
To begin let me explain what Digg is
Some people are not familiar with Digg so I will do my best to explain. Digg is an online bookmarking site. Instead of bookmarking your site in Internet Explorer you actually go online to Digg.com or you have a button in Internet Explorer for Digg. By clicking on this button you are “digging” the webpage you are on or “adding” it to your favorites in the Digg.com system. As more people add it as their favorite it gets a higher ranking. It could eventually be “dug” so many times that it reaches one of the top articles of the day.
What is so great about being “dug” on digg.com
If a website makes it to the front page on Digg.com they will receive millions of visitors to their site for that day. Everyone knows visits mean money and so they could potentially make tens of thousands of dollars on this particular day. There are people out there who have several hundred digg accounts. They digg over 100 articles a day and get their clients up onto the top page. They charge anywhere from $2,000 - $3,000 to do this but it is well worth it to the internet entrepreneurs who make most of their money by selling their product online. Lets say 1,000,000 people view a site that paid a Digg extrepreneur $3,000. Chances are that 2% of the people viewing the article will click on a pay per click ad or buy something he is selling. The website owner stands to make $50,000 from that day alone. This is only a guess as to the money thath is available out there but there are people taking advantage of it and it is quite interesting to say the least.
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07.20.07
Posted in Trojan Deep Cycle Batteries, deep-cycle-batteries at 3:27 pm by admin
Trojan Deep Cycle Golf Cart Batteries are the ideal deep cycle battery to buy when looking for an affordable alternative energy battery. These batteries can be used in tandem with 4 6 volt batteries. These golf cart batteries have a large capacity, they are reliable, a quality product and affordable.
Trojan actually invented the golf cart battery. The last a very long time and 98% of golf carts have a Trojan battery under the seat. Why do we use a golf cart battery for solar energy projects and wind turbine projects? The reason is because they are very reliable and have the right amount of capacity. Remember you want 24 volts total which means 4 of these batteries will do the trick. That will only cost you about $400 and will be a great investment to be well on your way with a succesful energy project for your home.
“More than 98% of America’s top golf courses use Trojan Batteries in their fleets.* Why? Trojan invented the golf car battery back in 1952 and has been making superior products ever since. Check under the seat of an electric golf car and you’re likely to see Trojan deep cycle batteries. Built to deliver superior performance, durability and reliability, these batteries are Trojan’s flagship line and can meet the challenges of the toughest, hilliest courses in the world.
- Trojan’s proprietary Maxguard® Advanced Design Separator and exclusive Alpha Plus® paste formulation team up to increase battery life, extend run time and decrease maintenance.
- Durability, reliability and proven technology mean you can depend on Trojan batteries for consistent performance day in and day out.
- Outstanding technical support is available on the phone or on the web.
- Products are available through Trojan’s worldwide network of Master Distributors “
*Based on listings of top golf courses in Golf Digest, Golf Magazine and the US Open list of venues 1995-2010.
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