Results tagged “consumer” from KPAO

I got a letter in the mail from Dollar rent-a-car a last week. It claimed damage on a car I rented when I was in Michigan for the new year and demanded nearly $700 for damages. It was crazy, because I didn't hit anything with the car, and nothing hit me.

Looking through my paperwork from the trip, I realize that I don't have anything from the car return stating the condition of the car, just the final receipt. I just presumed that was a part of the check in process: If there's a problem with the car, they tell you right then and there. Nope. Apparently it's my responsibility to get someone to check the car out and give me that paperwork.

Luckily I rented it with a Visa card that has rental car insurance. I've kicked off the process for them to pay the claim for me. No doubt they will only pay part of it. I'm sure I'll be responsible for things like the "administration fee" and "lost use" fee.

But I suppose the silver lining is that this is a lesson learned. I will always be sure to get an employee to check out the car and give me paperwork stating there is no damage to it. And barring that, I will take a bunch of pictures of the car with the day's newspaper in it to prove it was returned with no damage. Renter beware.

The economy sucks. I'm unemployed. We've lost over a third of our net worth in the past 6 months. It's time for a good, hard look at the monthly budget.

The thing I'm looking at the hardest are the monthly recurring bills. Any savings here is recurrent savings, and the savings compounds.

First on the chopping block was the TV service. I've had DirecTV + a DVR for nearly 10 years, but $64/month is far too much in this day and age of Hulu and Amazon's Video on Demand service, paying that much (or really anything) for TV is simply unnecessary. I bought a digital/HD antenna, and we'll use that for local news, breaking news, and the occasional TV show. For everything else, it's the internet.

Speaking of internet, my DSL needs a trim too. I'm still on the $50/month plan with 4 static IP addresses. I don't need those anymore. (In fact, I really never did.) I can get to $40/month for a single dynamic address. I might even consider going to $25/month which drops my bandwidth from 3/.75 Mbps to 1.5/.4 Mbps. Although now that I think about it, that might impact the whole "watch TV over the internet" plan. Hmmm....

We already don't have Netflix; we use the library for DVDs. And some things just can't be easily cut: water, sewer, garbage... Although for that last one, I suppose I could distribute my garbage across my neighbors' partially empty bins the night before. But I don't think I'm quite that desperate yet.

And as for my mobile phone service, it's too soon to switch. I'm an iPhone guy now, and I need my smart phone capabilities. But I am hopeful that other phone manufacturers will get their act together in 2009 and truly compete with the iPhone. Ditto for other mobile carriers vs. AT&T. And then I'll happily shop for a new phone and plan, for less money.

Unless the user experience sucks. Then I'll stick with the iPhone. After all, some things are worth paying a little bit extra for.

Fry's Electronics is a classic example of the "love it / hate it" dilemma. The exasperatingly low quality of their staff is well documented elsewhere, so there's little need to go into that again. If you happen to be in a Fry's in Silicon Valley, it's not an exaggeration to say that you are more likely to get help from the consumer standing next you in the aisle than the service rep. I have witnessed, and participated in several interchanges where an engineer responsible for some aspect of the product in question happens to be shopping there, answers questions from customers.

But like I keep trying to say, that's not the point of this post. This post is about your civil rights. In 1788 Patrick Henry said "You ought to be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty; for instead of securing your rights you may lose them forever." Here's a tiny little thing you can do at Fry's to be a patriotic defender of liberty: stop fricking showing you receipt at the door!

Fry's is not Costco -- it is not a "club," you did not pay any money or sign a contract to "join" Fry's. Shopping at Fry's does not constitute an agreement to give up any of your rights -- it's a public establishment. When asked for your receipt at the door, just (politely) say "no thanks!" and keep walking. Not having a pink mark on your receipt doesn't mean you can't return an item -- I've easily done this many times. (OK that's a lie, returning things to Fry's is never easy, but you get the idea).

I have been doing this for years, and I have never had a single issue -- in fact the employees at the door have always been polite. They understand that they can't stop you -- you should too.

The title of this post aside, I actually like Country Sun Natural Foods in Palo Alto. They have a pretty good selection of vegan and vegetarian products, lots of locally grown organic produce, and a knowledgeable staff. Of course, one-quarter of the floor space is dedicated to supplements and homeopathy, but if they want to sell worthless-crap snake oil to clueless morons that's their business. Hey -- it's capitalism -- give the customers what they want, right?

Well almost right I suppose. I won't complain too much that Country Sun doesn't accept American Express, even though the Amex Blue Cash is my new favorite credit card and every other grocery store in the county accepts it. And I certainly can't complain they there is now better produce available cheaper right outside their own door every Sunday morning at the local farmer's market. After all that's not their fault. What I will complain about is their refusal to accept more than one coupon of any kind. That's their rule: one coupon per household per day. The only reason I that I can think of for this policy is that it must be too much of a hassle to redeem tons of manufacturer's coupons. (Cue the tiny violins).

Maybe there's some other reason? No clue -- they wouldn't say. The helpful clerks just kept repeating the rule: "one coupon per household per day." There's no shortage of organic groceries available in Palo Alto these days (we invented "earthy crunchy" in the Bay Area). Even mega-corp Safeway has good organic food these days, and since they're based in the Bay Area they even qualify as local I suppose. Plus they take all of my coupons, and my American Express card.

I just bought a TV antenna from Amazon. (The Winegard MS-2002: amplified, omni-directional HD. I highly recommend it for over-the-air HD/digital TV.) It showed up last week, and I promptly installed it on my roof. Yesterday I happened to see  see that the very same antenna — for which I paid $80.28 — was now selling for $58.99 + tax on Amazon. That's a difference of $16.42; a 20% discount.

So I thought I'd just invoke the Amazon Price Guarantee and get a refund for the difference. However, I couldn't find a link to it on their site. The reason why? They stopped doing this on Sept 1, 2008.

So I did what any consumer who has a strong sense of justice and is slightly crazy would do. I ordered a new one and returned the original.

Shipping the original back is free, and the shipping on the new one is free, too. It'll be a bit of hassle on my part. But I hope that by doing this — and by blogging about it — Amazon realizes how short-sighted it was for them to drop the price guarantee. Granted, most people who would have used the price match guarantee aren't going to be as extreme as me and do the return + re-buy gambit. But for the few of us that do, Amazon is losing money on the transaction by paying for an additional 2 shippings of the product. And that's my lever with them. Make it less economical for them to allow return and re-buy than to simply refund the difference.

So here's my call to action. If you run into a case where Amazon drops the price within the return window, do what I did. Buy a new one and return the old one. And then tell Amazon about it. I'm putting a link to this blog post on Amazon's Get Satisfaction page.