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Wasn't sure about this, so tested it out!

So yup, you need an account to leave a review, which is a shame, as that will deter a lot of people, but I suppose the argument for it, is if you want to leave lots of reviews and be a "Yelper" then you only have to do it once.

But within 2 minutes of me joining, I have a friend...

and another just come through....

Yep.. and another.....   god I'm popular 

Looking at the amount of time this company has been trading, I doubt you can call them crooks, but it sounds like they have a good sales team. 

If I've said it once over the years... but I'll say it again. Never ever agree to anything or buy a product from a cold call. It doesn't mean a product or service is bad, but pressure selling is a technique as old as the hills, and any special offer that's been promised, will still be available after you have put the phone down 

If it's not, you've had a close escape!

If you think a product or service is of interest, get as much info as you want, be polite, and tell them you will get in touch if interested. Then spend 5 minutes on Google and do some research. You normally only need 5 minutes to work out if a company is worth doing business with.

If they give you the full hard sell and won't let you disengage from the conversation, just put the phone down and move on.

I know that doesn't help you mapps, but some good advice from Indizine ref the credit card if you are genuinely concerned. Make sure you give the company a chance to respond as well, how long before you asked them to get in touch?

Be interested to know how they do respond, but you must be careful jumping to conclusions and accusing companies of being scammers, when you've only just decided to subscribe to their services. 

Let us know how you get on.

Well the roads were nice and quiet today as the schools are off (at least in Warwickshire).

But this introduces complications for working parents, and can be a head ache for sole traders and small business owners.

So how many people are trying to struggle on with kids running round in the back ground, limping along with employees missing, or maybe you shut up shop for the school holidays?

Amazing how your views change when you have kids, and I cringe now about how unsympathetic I used to be when it came to employees and childcare 

Yahoo and Yelp recently partnered allowing Yelp reviews to be shown on Yahoo Local Business Listings.

Sounds fair enough. But it seems they made a bit of a pigs ear of the implementation and instead off allowing for previously generated Yahoo reviews, and combining them with Yelp ones, businesses have simply lost any previous Yahoo reviews. Something that will also happen on Bing, as Yahoo and Bing have a content partnership deal.

Local Businesses Losing Reviews After Yelp-Yahoo Deal - Search Engine Land

"We partnered with Yelp, one of the most trusted, relevant sources of consumer business reviews, to provide a richer search experience for Yahoo users. That’s why when Yelp’s reviews are available for U.S. businesses, they will replace Yahoo Local reviews."

So if you had 25 reviews on Yahoo, and then get 1 on Yelp, you lose the previous 25 

Be interesting to see if this is rolled out to the UK, as Yelp has a much less dominant position than it does in the UK. But it does seem a very odd way of doing things, and with access to all that technical resource, they certainly could have done it better IMHO!

Apparently the UK has the largest Self Storage Industry in Europe!

Self-storage: The men who got rich selling empty space - BBC

It's amazing that the majority of us store most of our clutter, junk and rubbish in the garage, and leave our most expensive possession after the house, out on the drive in all weather.

Now it seems a lot of us need even more space, hence the explosion in self storage. "Experts say we have six times more "stuff" than the previous generation"

I think we all just need a good clear out. Box it up, put it in the garage, if you haven't looked at it for 6 months, take it down the charity shop 

Now just need to convince the wife...

Thanks for the feedback Virtual PA, and welcome aboard 

It's been about 4 years since we last got pounced on by the sales reps. I think the whole pressure selling ethos has changed for a lot of organisations over years, so hopefully this is now a thing of the past for the FSB. Or maybe it was a simple case of our local branch being a bit over zealous.

But I am a fan and advocate of what they strive to achieve on behalf of businesses, I'm just naturally cynical of membership fees. It would be nice to see some kind of start up incentive, maybe a minimal fee for a businesses first 12 months, a time when just about everyone is trying to get money out of them.

Had a good look round the website, and there certainly seems to be a wealth of member benefits, although struggled to find the actual rate card, other than I can join from £150 a year.

But a quick Google, and found it! FSB Membership Rates

Does anyone else have any feedback, or do we have any other FSB members? It's always nice for a small or new business to be part of a support network. Would you or have you considered the FSB?

In the words of 1970's British Rail...  "we're getting there" 

Session cookies now live so no one should be getting logged out unless you physically select the log out option. Anyone still having problems let me know.

lol none taken, we're just super keen on customer service 

Have a great weekend.

Indizine flagged this one, and as soon as the penny dropped, I realised we had missed something major off the new forum 

When you look at a forum now, such as General Business Discussion, any threads that are bold mean you have either never visited this discussion before, or there have been new posts to the discussion since your last visit.

You already get this information in your forum profile, but it is visually quicker and easier to see it from the main forum. eg:

Threads not in bold mean there are no new posts since your last visit.

Threads in bold mean there are new posts since your last visit.

If you select a thread in bold, you will be taken to the first new post.

The first new post may be the first post of the thread if you haven't visited it before, or it may be 25 posts in, if you are involved in a discussion.

vBulletin forums and other forum software typically use an icon in the thread list to take you to the first new post. But we have done away with that, and combined it with the thread view.

We think it is less confusing doing it this way, rather than adding in a small icon into the thread view, but if the consensus says otherwise, we can revert to a vBulletin style icon in the future.

This functionality is only available to members who are logged in. Any guests will see all forum threads as "unread" (ie bold).

As we have moved to a new platform, we are unable to carry over views from the previous vBulletin forum. So threads and posts are only marked as read as from 28th March 2014.

Hope that makes sense