Lazy Man and Money

Amex Gives You $25 to Spend; Costco’s Amazing Dishwasher Tablet Sale

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How is your Black Friday going? Mine? I haven’t done any Black Friday shopping. I’m still watching Amazon’s Lightning Deals and I almost pulled the trigger on a blanket with hundreds of reviews saying how soft it is. I’m a sucker for soft. However, I already have more blankets than I can currently use, so I didn’t spend the measly $12.

I might have bought more stuff today, but you all were quiet when I asked for advice on what to get. That’s what I get for posting Wednesday night on the west coast.

Maybe, if I give you a couple of good deals we can get the ball rolling here. Tomorrow (Saturday), American Express is trying to get people to shop at small businesses. They are willing to put their money where their mouth is too. If you register your American Express card on their site and use the card at a small business they’ll credit your account $25. They even make it easy by suggesting some places to spend the money. For me, a local Mediterranean restaurant is participating. After a few straight days of left-over turkey, we should be primed to hit them up for a free meal. I normally wouldn’t carry an AMEX card, but my wife and I got one for Costco to get a few more dollars off.

On the topic of Costco, the last time I was there, I noticed that they what seemed to be a deal on Finish Powerball brand dishwasher tablets. The box said that there were 200 instead of the typical 100 at the same price – amounting to 100 more free. I chalked it up to marketing, thinking that they probably did raise the price and moved on. However, I was on SlickDeals.net recently and they had a thread on the Finish Powerball Tablets. You have to buy two packages, but you get 400 tablets for about $34 + tax. You don’t have to be a Costco Member – you just pay 5% more. Everyone seems jazzed about the deal. I decided to price compare at Amazon and they had 100 of the tablets would cost $17 – and the reviews said that this was an outstanding price compared to their local store. If 17 cents a tablet is a good deal, the 9 cents a tablet I paid has got to be amazing right?

The downside is that you have to buy 400 tablets. I imagine some families may go through them in a year or two. My wife and I don’t really use up a lot of dishes. It’s not unusual for us to go almost a week without running a load. Let’s say that we do it a little more often, every 5 days, we’ll get nearly 5 and a half years out of this one purchase. I’m not an extreme coupon shopper, but $7 for a years worth of dishwasher tablets seems makes me feel like one.

So now, do you have any Black Friday deals to share with me? Please?

I Saved $150 on a Samsung 32″ Television by Accident

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Last week, my wife said, “I think it’s about time that we got a second television in the apartment.” From time to time, I’ve been known to tune out what she’s saying, but this time my ears perked up. Hmm, I think I can sanction the purchase of a television.

Here are the problems the I had looking for television on short notice:

  • I couldn’t use Craigslist to save half the money. This is my typical plan, but I had to strike while the iron was hot (i.e. my wife agreed to the television thing).
  • I thought that Costco would have the best deal. It’s impossible to know what they have until you get there. Once there, I don’t have my computer to look up reviews online to see if it’s a good set.

I was going to make a somewhat major purchase a little blind. This always gives me an uneasy feeling. Our first stop was Costco. Oddly, they didn’t have many 32″ televisions in stock and not one of them was 1080P (1080 lines of progressive scan resolution – the best there is). If we were able to go larger we might have gotten a good deal, but our bedroom simply doesn’t have the room for anything bigger.

The next step was to go to Circuit City. Normally, I’d go to Best Buy, but there isn’t one close to my home. Happily, Circuit City had about 5 or 6 televisions that were 32″ and 1080P. The problem was that the 37″ Samsung was their special of the week and was actually cheaper than this 32" one.
. When the salesman came over I asked what was up with that? He said it was just the way it is.

Once again, I felt uneasy about the purchase. It kills me to pay more money and get less product., just because our apartment has a weird layout. I hemmed and hawed for at least 20 minutes over it. Finally, the salesman comes over and says that he can chop off $100 on the Sony XBR one. It would still be $100 more than the Samsung that I was looking at, but Sony XBRs are nice. A difficult decision just got worse.

I hem and haw for another 15 minutes. At this point, my wife is wandering the store and probably plotting my death. The salesman can’t even deal with me any more and went to help others. A new salesman sees me and asks if he can help. I tell him that the other salesman said he’d knock off $100 from the Sony XBR. This salesman then said something magical, “He must have been giving you the online price. Let me look that up.” I was quick to ask if he’d give me the online price on the Samsung 32″ as well. The other salesman didn’t offer that. This salesman said that he’d be happy to give us that price.

It turns out that the online price was $150 cheaper. That sealed the deal for me. I was comfortable with the purchase. Of course, it made me mad that they didn’t start with the online price. Oddly, just a couple of days later Circuit City would be running commercials saying that you’ll find the same price in the store as will online. Odd that this is considered a selling point – it should be automatic. When you think about it, it simply makes sense. Many stores have a buy online and pick up in the store… That’s essentially what this was.

The moral of the story here is to look out for weird pricing from the big chain stores. Perhaps print off a copy of the website and bring it with you to the store so that you can get that price.

Product Safety vs. Privacy

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David Horowitz authors the very popular Fight Back! website. As a consumer advocate we have something in common. He writes for the Costco Connection, a magazine that is sent to Costco members. Most of the time, his one page article is the highlight of the magazine. July’s issue is no different.

The typical article is divided into three points that consumers should know right away. Two of this months articles are about medical warnings and changes that don’t fit the scope of what I write about. The other one, product recalls, is something that struck me as interesting. First, I’ll have to paraphrase the problem that Horowitz brings to light.

What Happens When a Product is Recalled

It’s pretty straight forward for products on the shelf… the store takes them off the shelf. What about the products that are already purchased? It’s hard to get a hold of consumers to let them know that they dangerous product. A new bill aims to fix that. A manufacturer of children’s products would have to keep track of consumer’s who purchased their products in case they are recalled.

What About Privacy?

Is losing our privacy the price we pay for safety? I might not care too much about the privacy when I buy a children’s product, but I could see this leaking into other areas that might be concerned about. Do I want companies to have a record of everything I purchase? I suppose that if I use a credit card, they probably already have that record. I still like the option of using cash and being anonymous.

Is there a good solution that protects privacy? I suppose that we could go to Recalls.Gov and look up our products every now and again, but who would really keep up with that. Maybe someone could set up a master database and one could enter the products they own. They’d give an e-mail they use and when something comes up the consumer would be e-mailed. I’d feel more anonymous if I could use my e-mail as an alias. I don’t mind that they contact huggybear83062@yahoo.com (not a real e-mail address that I know of).

What do you think? Are you concerned about your privacy for all the products you buy or does safety trump it? Can you have your cake (safety) and eat it too (privacy)?