Monday, July 26, 2010

We Are Now On Wordpress!



Here is the latest from "The Hope Process"

We have moved our blog over to Wordpress format! So please make a note of this :)

Here is the link to our new wordpress blog: http://www.helpyourcharitynow.com/

See you over there!

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Latest News from Mark and the BIKE THE US FOR MS!



July 12 – By Mark

An early morning start after a rest day is not easy but it had to be
done nonetheless. The mountain bike I rented yesterday had to be
turned in by 9AM and I couldn’t leave Telluride, Colorado without one
more run on the Village trail, an incredible run down the mountain and
through the dark woods. I woke up at 6AM and headed out by myself as
soon as possible to the gondola. I got up to the mountain by 8AM and
went to work. Last night’s trail took a few of us deep into the
woods, across the whole face of the mountain, and through the secluded
neighborhoods on the other side. That ten mile trail took us over an
hour and left us coming back to camp last night around 9PM. The
village trail was shorter but gave a phenomenal ending to my stay at
Telluride.

Switching back over to my road bike was…interesting and made me wish
I had a set of suspension forks on it. Is that possible in any way?
Today’s climb to Lizard Head Pass was short but gave Dale and I an
incredible overlook of a lake with the mountains behind it.

After that, it was one of the easiest days of the whole trip; over 50 miles
of downhill to get out of the Rockies, the longest downhill of the
whole trip. Stopping for breaks wasn’t all that necessary and some
people went for 30+ miles on the bike at a time. After every curve
was more downhill after downhill. While it’s usually a given that
when you go downhill there’s an uphill eventually coming up, we had
put in the effort weeks before (as early as Kansas) to get up to the
elevation that warranted nearly a whole day of minimal effort.

Our day ended in Delores, which would be our last stop in Colorado.
We hung out in town for a while before going a few miles to our
campsite in the park. Dale’s routine of getting to the site early
didn’t pay off this time as someone ended up stealing our sign that
normally directs us to our day’s destination. With no way of knowing,
he missed the turn and added a few more miles to his odometer today.
Lucky for me, Ben King had a sharp eye and spotted the turn before we
past it.

Tonight was a cooking night for just about all of us and between that
and working on my bike I was busy til 10PM. I semi-washed my pots and
pans (you almost can wash just about any pots without soap) in the
park bathroom and then went to my tent in Ben City. I’ve got no MSR
Hubba Hubba but my Northface tadpole puts up a pretty good fight. The
sky was filled with stars and looked awesome but I couldn’t care
enough to stay up and contemplate the universe. I got into my
sleeping bag and called it night.


Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Discover The Hope Process!




In conjunction with IRN's rebate, Discover has decided to double the
contribution on all Discover processing fees through December 2010!
Discover is honored to participate in a program with such a powerful
mission that provides real benefits to so many different charitable
organizations.” said Matt Johanson, Vice President, Acquirer Relations
at Discover. “This program represents a great way for merchants to
give back to the charity of their choice during these challenging
economic times.”

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Tips To Help Reduce Credit Card Fraud


Help reduce fraud when accepting credit cards online:

 Late night orders tend to have more fraudulent transactions then during the day
 Orders from certain countries can be suspect check with your processor for this list
 Orders in higher volume then you usually receive could be fraud. Cybercrooks don’t care how high the bill is, since they don’t intend to pay it
 Email addresses that seem to have no apparent connection to the customer’s name or include random characters could be an attempt to mask identity
 If a customer does not supply full information which includes the complete address and phone number consider not accepting this order
 If they are available, utilize CVC2 (MasterCard) and CVV2 (Visa). These two numbers are the three unique digits on the back of a MasterCard and Visa credit card. These are used in situations where the card is not present, e.g. mail order, telephone order and Internet credit card transaction.

Stopping fraud and chargebacks at the point of sale for retail merchants (card present)

 Verify cardholder’s signature to make sure it is the same as the name embossed on the card.
 Compare the signature on the card to that on the sales slip. Do not continue to seek authorizations on a declined transaction; do not reduce the amount requested and do not repeat the request
 Process refunds to your customers account quickly, always using the same credit card number from the original sale. Never give a customer a refund by cash or check.
 Make sure the information that prints on the credit card receipts matches what is printed on the credit card.