Good God. Here I've been struggling trying to think of other business models that are going to take off in the new world, but I've been all wrong. THE business model for the new century? Filling out forms. I've been looking to refinance my home using this interesting new type of mortgage (I'll go into that in a later post). As part of what is required, my homeowners association needs to provide some basic information: how many units, current budget, etc. For this they charged me $75. $75! In addition to registering my complaints verbally with the firm, I decided to write a little letter. ----------------------From: [Me]
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 2:28 PM
To: [Them]
Subject: Certification for the home owners associationDear [Him]I have to register my extreme displeasure with being charged $75 for the certification of the home owners association. The amount of money for the little amount of work done seems disproportionate with the cost. On the phone, your associate said that three people needed to be brought together in order to fill out the form, and it normally takes about 20 minutes. By this logic, those three people could make $150,000 a year doing nothing more than filling out those forms ($75 per form * 3 forms per hour * 2000 work hours in the year / 3 people). From my perspective, it seems to be the most extreme form of gouging.After receiving the report, I browsed through the website you use to collect the forms. According to this site: http://associationis.com/AIS/servlet/AISP2NewWindow?camId=6 the total cost for your forms are $30. Where does the additional $45 charge come from? Are you really charging $45 for an action which must take your "team" less than 5 minutes to print out?[Additional complaints here]Sincerely,
[Me]----------------------If I could do one thing before I die, it'd be to put all these people who do nothing more than charge for entering, storing and printing out information out of business. There's just no reason these people need to exist in the digital age.
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 2:28 PM
To: [Them]
Subject: Certification for the home owners associationDear [Him]I have to register my extreme displeasure with being charged $75 for the certification of the home owners association. The amount of money for the little amount of work done seems disproportionate with the cost. On the phone, your associate said that three people needed to be brought together in order to fill out the form, and it normally takes about 20 minutes. By this logic, those three people could make $150,000 a year doing nothing more than filling out those forms ($75 per form * 3 forms per hour * 2000 work hours in the year / 3 people). From my perspective, it seems to be the most extreme form of gouging.After receiving the report, I browsed through the website you use to collect the forms. According to this site: http://associationis.com/AIS/servlet/AISP2NewWindow?camId=6 the total cost for your forms are $30. Where does the additional $45 charge come from? Are you really charging $45 for an action which must take your "team" less than 5 minutes to print out?[Additional complaints here]Sincerely,
[Me]----------------------If I could do one thing before I die, it'd be to put all these people who do nothing more than charge for entering, storing and printing out information out of business. There's just no reason these people need to exist in the digital age.