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Grex > Coop13 > #23: Cyberspace Communications finances for September 2003 | |
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| Author |
Message |
aruba
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Cyberspace Communications finances for September 2003
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Oct 1 15:10 UTC 2003 |
Here is the treasurer's report on Cyberspace Communications, Inc. finances
through September 30th, 2003.
Beginning Balance $3,941.79
Credits $270.00 Member contributions
$10.24 Proceeds from the 7th Grex auction
$6.00 Miscellaneous donations
$1.62 Interest on our savings account
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$287.86
Debits $80.41 Pumpkin Rent for October
$45.97 Electricity for September
$158.15 Phone Bill
$135.00 DSL September 15 through October 15
$5.81 Paypal fees (income = $108)
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$425.34
Ending Balance $3,804.31
Our current balance breaks down as follows:
$3,567.77 General Fund
$153.99 Silly Hat Fund
$60.00 Spare Parts Fund
$22.55 Infrastructure Fund
The money is distributed like this:
$438.73 Checking account
$3,365.58 Savings account earning 0.65% interest annually
We had three new members (markag, fhoda, and siamiam) in September.
We are currently at 79 members, 77 of whom are paid through at least
October 15th. (The others expired recently and are in a grace
period.)
Notes:
- Our Centrex contract is up on October 21st. The Board voted to drop
two public dial-in lines and the staff line, which should save us
about $70 per month, starting on the 21st.
- The bank account continues to drop. I wish we could get some more new
members.
Thanks to everyone who contributed in September:
brasil, dpc, dpfitzen, fhoda, gelinas, markag, mcafee, mooncat,
siamiam, teruiki, one person who didn't give a login, and one person
who asked to remain anonymous.
If you or your institution would like to become a member of Grex, it only
costs $6/month or $60/year. Send money to:
Cyberspace Communications
P. O. Box 4432
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432
If you pay by cash or money order, please include a photocopy of some
form of ID. I can't add you to the rolls without ID. (If you pay
with a personal check that has your name pre-printed on it, we
consider that a good enough ID.) Type !support or see
http://www.cyberspace.org/member.html for more info.
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| 34 responses total. |
asddsa
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response 1 of 34:
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Oct 2 02:38 UTC 2003 |
How is it GreX gets a phone bill that's almost 160 dollars?
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aruba
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response 2 of 34:
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Oct 2 02:44 UTC 2003 |
See, the way it works is, we pay the phone company money, and they let
people call us.
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jp2
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response 3 of 34:
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Oct 2 02:46 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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asddsa
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response 4 of 34:
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Oct 2 02:48 UTC 2003 |
O, you get that many phone calls?
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gull
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response 5 of 34:
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Oct 2 17:43 UTC 2003 |
We have a lot of lines.
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mdw
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response 6 of 34:
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Oct 3 07:08 UTC 2003 |
It costs about $20/mo to have a phone line that somebody can use to call
you. If you never call anybody else, and only receive calls, you still
gotta pay the $20. Grex has about 7 of those lines. 7 x 20 = 160, in a
very approximate sort of way. That's the way the world works. Deal
with it.
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aruba
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response 7 of 34:
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Oct 3 13:13 UTC 2003 |
(7 x $20 = $140, but we pay $20 in overhead for our Centrex system.)
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krj
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response 8 of 34:
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Oct 3 16:07 UTC 2003 |
Am I correct that we will lose "rotary" behavior and go back to "trunk
hunt" as Grex drops Centrex service?
("rotary" means that if line #2 is bad, subsequent calls go to #3, #4, etc,
and bad #2 doesn't get called again until all other lines have been called
in order. "trunk hunt" means that if #2 is bad, nobody ever gets to call
#3, or #4, or...)
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mdw
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response 9 of 34:
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Oct 4 02:42 UTC 2003 |
That sounds like what I think I've heard called the "call distribution
feature". I vaguely remember mention of that when we got centrex. My
guess is that so far as the hardware goes, it could care less what
billing plan we're on, and probably won't change unless we ask it.
However, I guess it's likely we would lose the ability to go in and
change stuff -- I think we had some ability to do that with centrex. So
yes that sounds like a great question for the phone company. I wish I
had more confidence we could get a straight and accurate answer though.
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aruba
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response 10 of 34:
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Oct 4 02:58 UTC 2003 |
We will go back to a straight trunk hunt, like we had before 1996, with no
ability to modify options. I think we modified our options a grand total of
once or twice in the 7 years we had centrex, so I don't see that as a great
loss.
I will ask if there is some kind of a rotary thing we can get, when I call
SBC next week.
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keesan
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response 11 of 34:
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Oct 5 17:18 UTC 2003 |
The phone company gives a discount of about $2 for limited calling (you can
make only 50 outgoing calls) and another discount of about $2.50 for pulse
instead of tone service. (Jim is getting the discount but he discovered
recently that his phone now dials tone instead of pulse - it must have been
cheaper that way for SBC). Can grex get these two discounts, considering it
never makes outgoing calls anyway? Or maybe it has them already since the
regular phone bill for me is $25 not $20.
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aruba
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response 12 of 34:
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Oct 5 22:02 UTC 2003 |
I will ask, Sindi - thanks for pointing that out. Business prices are
somewhat different from home prices, so I don't know whether those
differences apply to Grex or not.
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cmcgee
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response 13 of 34:
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Oct 6 03:48 UTC 2003 |
Grex will have a difficult time claiming it does not need tone service. I
don't think we can use pulse lines for dial-ins.
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charcat
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response 14 of 34:
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Oct 6 04:10 UTC 2003 |
\I was told once that the phone companies are phasing out the pulse dialing
and that once you switched to tone you couldn't go back.
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keesan
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response 15 of 34:
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Oct 6 04:32 UTC 2003 |
The pulse service is for dial-outs, not dial-ins. Your phone cannot tell what
method someone used to dial you. Plus I have had no trouble dialing grex from
two pulse phone lines for many years now.
Thanks for the info that new pulse service is no longer offered - of course
they would not want to offer it since anyone getting it now would get tone
service for the price of pulse. I got the last party line in Ann Arbor with
nobody sharing it - they discontinued it soon afterwards and would not let
me have the other half of the party line at another address.
I recall that business phone lines have to pay about 10 cents per outgoing
call so probably there is no discount for limited outgoing calls. We had to
get a business line at Kiwanis and pay for each call out.
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davel
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response 16 of 34:
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Oct 6 13:04 UTC 2003 |
We (my family) still use pulse dialing, rather than pay several dollars a
month more. For years Ameritech->SBC has periodically notified us that a few
months later they would no longer allow this - that they would switch us &
start billing us for tone service. It's never actually happened.
I'm fairly sure that maintaining pulse capability is expensive for them. They
ought to pay us to switch, rather than maintaining the fiction that tone
somehow costs more and that they should charge for the privilege.
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i
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response 17 of 34:
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Oct 7 02:28 UTC 2003 |
Once anything is enshrined in a regulated rate schedule...
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asddsa
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response 18 of 34:
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Oct 7 14:50 UTC 2003 |
pulse lines rule.
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mdw
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response 19 of 34:
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Oct 8 06:15 UTC 2003 |
The phone company probably doesn't have the capability to disable tone
service on lines -- or if it does, chooses not to because (a) it makes
it harder for them sto service lines, and (b) it's a needless business
complication.
Probably they would like to disable pulse service on lines - but that
means a period during which people's old pulse dial lines (or newer
phones accidently switched to this setting) stop working and the
resulting angry customer calls.
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aruba
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response 20 of 34:
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Oct 12 13:49 UTC 2003 |
One of the dues payments we received last month has been reversed by paypal,
apparently because the credit card the payer used was fraudulent. The
payment was for $60, so I'll subtract that from next month's credits.
I had not received ID for the user in question (nor am I sure of his/her
Grex login - it was never stated), so he/she was never added to the
membership rolls.
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dah
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response 21 of 34:
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Oct 17 11:29 UTC 2003 |
The system worked.
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asddsa
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response 22 of 34:
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Oct 19 04:36 UTC 2003 |
0 Yeah.
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aruba
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response 23 of 34:
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Oct 30 23:40 UTC 2003 |
Ack. It looks like I misunderstood the mail from Paypal about the charge
that was reversed earlier this month. They sent me a message telling me
that we would be indemnified against the loss if we met a long list of
conditions that we don't meet (like, we shipped to a verified address in
the US, etc.), and if I clicked on a link and provided some information.
Thinking that we weren't covered anyway, and not having any useful
information, I didn't click on the link.
So now they tell me we owe them $10 in chargeback money for not responding
in the allotted time. So I apologize for costing Grex $10 - I didn't
understand that there was a fee at stake, or I would have responded right
away. I'll be on top of it if we get another reversal in the future.
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other
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response 24 of 34:
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Oct 31 00:17 UTC 2003 |
That's IT, Mark! As of January, you are FIRED as Treasurer!
;)
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