Window Shopper

Welcome back!

That sounded goofy, didn’t it. I tend to overlook the end of October’s obvious day and head straight for Thanksgiving. Our family, as much of it is in the neighborhood, always get together at my Mom’s house and celebrate the day. Three are currently away in other states. One of those will be home for the holiday. That will be the big meal. Christmas is usually more about having a good time and celebrating with the kids while they ooh and ahh about their presents. Regardless of the holiday, there is always dessert. Always. What’s a holiday without dessert?

Even now, I can taste Mom’s pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie and there will usually be cookies galore. Mom acts like the typical Grandma with all the kids, young and older. Inevitably, there will be an exchange of dessert recipes because I don’t have all of hers yet. See, I am more of a cook than a baker so my attempts at baking can be disastrous at times. Except for cookies, usually chocolate chip and oatmeal, I tend to leave the grand baking to Mom. The crusts on her pies are awesome. I don’t think I have ever had that type of flaky crust on any other pie but hers. So, do you see why I am skipping the one for the other? Besides, we do not recognize that day at the end of this month anyway. I am thinking of turkeys, dressing, salads, green bean casserole and so much more….and desserts!!! Can’t forget those.

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All I want is to be able to say something good right now in these disastrous times. I found the very thing. Gas prices are down. Of course, you probably already know that but it’s great just to say that after all the price hikes this year that killed everyone’s budget. In our area, the price is still at $3.27, something that surprised me considering that some of the other parts of the nation have much lower prices. We traveled up to Missouri yesterday to see a price of $2.99 which was a fantastic surprise to us. Of course, we filled up.

Normally, I would have a lot more to say but with the prices going down, there is not much to say except….keep on going down, down, down. I did hear that heating oil will be at an all time high which just goes to show that just because one price goes down does not mean the other will too. But I am glad that we do not have to pay those ridiculously high prices right now and hope those prices either stay where they are or go lower still, especially in our area. We need the price to go way down since our area is even more economically distressed than other parts of the country. It just means that we have been this for years and the rest of the country appears to be catching up to us.

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Fear drove the Dow down for the seventh straight day of trading. It closed under 9000, a place it has not been since 2003. Because of the greed of the large corporations now in distress or in bankruptcy, wild stock selling is occurring unlike it has ever been. The problem today came because of one of the top members of the Dow, General Motors, dropped sharply in their stock bringing down the other members. The auto industry has had it’s own problems this year which have been overshadowed by the housing crisis and the credit crisis. This is unlikely to stop anytime soon with fear running the people who handle the stocks.

Frankly, that is a huge problem. Fear leads to panic. No one can think straight when they’re panicked. And now we have a country full of people who are starting to panic. Others who did that long ago and some who will soon. Some cooler heads are still around but will those who are currently running in fear listen to the others? Who knows. A bigger problem seems to be that because of the various problems here in the United States, much of the banking and lending institutions around the world are also running on fear. That emotion simply should not be part of people’s lives but it is. Right now, it’s definitely part of all our lives whether we feel it or not.

It is time to stop and rethink things. Stop the fear and the panic. Wall Street needs to come to grips with the fact that if they do not stop the insanity that there will be more and more problems and a crisis every week. And soon, if it does not stop, a depression will occur if we are not already in one. Who can tell since the people of the media put their own spin on everything. We can hardly know if we are getting the story straight or not. So, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

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Before I tell my story, I want you to know that some members of my extended family have Alltel cell phones and they are being treated just great. They have been customers for years and have very few complaints against them. In fact, they have nothing bad to say about them at all. Now, having said that, on to a different experience.

I should also mention here that the original problem came because of an arrogant employee of a company that sells for Alltel meaning a go between, middle man. My husband and I had been waiting patiently for the day we could have a cell phone like so many others in the world. It seemed like everyone and his brothers and sisters had one. Yet with our financial situation it would be hard to do. Finally, the day came that we decided to bite the bullet and get one anyway. We found that there were certain circumstances in the rural area we live in that it would be wise to have one.

After receiving a nice little card from Alltel telling us that we could have a cell phone for a ridiculously low price, we went to investigate. The young man at the store let us know that he had been doing this for years and would be glad to make sure that we could have a cell phone in our neck of the woods since there were the nasty little “dead zones” all around our house. In fact, he would be glad to come out to our house to test it out for himself before we bought. He also mentioned that even if we got a cell phone and found that it would not work satisfactorily for us, we could return it and a cheerful refund would be given. As a matter of fact, the one selling point that worked with us was that if, for whatever reason the cell phone wasn’t what we wanted, we could return it and it would cost us nothing except our usage…meaning the time on the cell phone…so stated by the person at the store.

We decided to give it a try. He happened to be out of the particular phone we were to get but they would be in on Monday. We specifically told him that we had been without one this long, a weekend was not a big deal. We left. On Monday, we returned to the store. He was busy so we looked around. They had really nice phones. Ours was a pretty basic one but that was fine with us as long as it worked inside our house. We specified that several times. He said that he understood that, again mentioning how long he had been in this business. We filled out the paperwork, signed it, paid out the $10 for the cell phone and we were in business. At that time, we were told of the return policy of Alltel. It included a 14 or 15 day allowance for returning things without penalties. We agreed to that.

On the way home, we were trying it out. I called my Texas sis to see if it would work like it should. Fine. We talked for about two minutes. Once again at home, we discovered the nasty truth. The cell phone was not receiving a signal in our house unless we turned into a pretzel off in some corner where it would be very uncomfortable. With a huge sigh, we decided to return the cell phone to the store for the promised refund. We did not use it again with the idea that it was not ours if we returned it to the store. No sense in putting more time on it that we would have to pay for.

It took us about 4 days to actually get back to the store but when we did, the guy did cheerfully return our $10 and received the cell phone back. No questions asked. My husband DID tell him why we were returning it. He mentioned, for the first time I might add, that the side of the hill we were on was notorious for not getting good reception. And that was that. Until……..the bill came. It was a brand new startup package costing over $90. We were aware that we would have to pay that in the event of keeping the cell phone. However, we did not do that. So, I called them. They were happy to fix the bill……BUT……there was a $25 activation fee that was not going to be waved nor was the insurance on the TWO MINUTES of time going to be waived. Okay, I can see not waiving the insurance and I told them I was glad to pay the amount of time we were on the cell phone which amounted to TWO MINUTES. However, we were promised that if the cell phone did not work out, we would not have to pay any of the fees other than what we used. They insisted that when it was activated, that cost money and we could not get away with not paying it.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. She informed me that she was sorry but the rules are the rules. The activation fee will not be waived. She did get the bill chopped down to the $25 for activation, $5 for insurance, another small fee for handling or something and the fee for the less than two minutes that we actually used. It came to somewhere around $35. I insisted that we did not have the cell phone long enough for that amount of money especially for people who had to watch every penny. She said how sorry she was but that if we had a problem with the promise made by the young man at the store, then our problem was with him not with Alltel. It was said sort of rudely. Sigh.

We went back to the young man who had been doing this for years. And we finally realized that he conned us, telling us what he did so that we would be another sale. When he was confronted, he told us how much of a hurry we had been in, how we knew that the money was not returnable, how we were so interested that we could not wait for another cell phone he had coming in at a later date. Oh, and he told us that he had a great memory and remembered us very well. Wrong. None of that happened the way he said it. None of it was true. Now, another member of our family who had been a customer of Alltel for some time had gone in that same week to renew a contract and get a new phone. I have no idea what type of hurry they might have been in at the time but I suspect “Mr. I have a great memory” was remembering them, not us.

Since then, Alltel started to chase us down to get the money from us. We refused to pay it based on the fact that we were lied to and that Alltel did not apparently care that someone in a store representing them had lied. After calling us sometimes every day for weeks and weeks, they went to automated calls. We got those a couple times a day, several weeks. We also got bills in the mail that started to rise higher and higher. We did not just get a bill a month. Sometimes we would get several in a month. When the bills got to over $50, they suddenly stopped. A few weeks went by. Then the calls started coming at all times of the day or evening, automated so that you could not object or hang up on someone. They wanted us to call a number concerning a “business matter”. Once again, bills started coming in the mail but this time from a collection agency.

Over the three years or so that this has been going on, we have seen this bill go from one collection agency to another. Each one getting more and more aggressive for a while. Sometimes we would actually have real live people calling us, usually at supper time. And almost always, they would be THE MOST OBNOXIOUS humans I have ever talked to on the phone. I was commanded to pay my bills since I was such a deadbeat. I was told off by several men and women, sometimes the women getting more aggressive and nasty than the men. I was told that if I did not pay the bill, dire things would start happening. I was even called names by one of the callers. No, I did not get the name. DUH!!!

These are all tactics to get someone to pay them so that they can collect their fees. The caller is on commission. I have not yet bowed to such tactics and I never will. Things have died down for the moment though I have no doubt that it will happen again sometime soon. Who knows what that bill is up to now. The biggest problem I see is that no one since that first supervisor is willing to listen or help in any way. Even she did not help the way we needed it to be.

Yes, I am aware that with the usage of the phone that we did activate it and use it for the vast two minutes and kept it for four days. That is true. I cannot change that. HOWEVER, and this one is huge, we were promised by the young man at the store that we would not have to pay for something we did not have. We believed him. Alltel did not care that he lied to us. Did not care that we had a problem and want to help other than deduct the original fees that were not applicable to us anyway. They made no effort whatsoever to help us resolve this in any way. We would have worked out something and had a cell phone from them all this time if only they would have worked with us. They did not. And now, we do have a cell phone but it’s a prepaid one. And it works IN OUR HOUSE. Isn’t that strange?

Since then, we have had visitors to our home who had Alltel cell phones. They still do not work in our house. Ours does. MORAL of the story. If you are unsure if the cell phone works in your home, have someone go out and try it. And by the way, the young man promised us that he would be out before we bought our phone but was too busy to get there to test it out. Yep, that’s the deal. It all comes down to that young man who was pretty arrogant by the time we were done talking to him. He knew that no one would ever do anything about it at Alltel. And it was never his fault. If you want to know, just ask him. Of course, a tornado came and blew the store away one night. The company relocated the store but I have no idea where the guy is. Perhaps we were not the only ones with complaints. And yes, we did try to talk to the owners of the store. Nope. We had to got through the young man. That was not going to happen. Ah well.

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I have used calling cards for years. We get them at a well known large discount store and pay out, because we have an ongoing card, about $5 to reload it each time. We get 100 minutes for that, I believe. Now, you cannot tell the cashier that you want to pay out five bucks for minutes. You have to translate that into minutes for them to be able to charge you for it. That was a side issue but it bugs me. They should know the charge and the minutes. Onward. Calling cards are sometimes not giving you the actual minutes that you bought. Who am I kidding here. They never really give you ALL your minutes.

My calling card is from an extremely well known phone company, not one of those fly by night scheme cards. Still, if we call from a pay phone, at least the last time, it cost us 30 minutes worth of time just to connect to the other phone. But that is nothing compared to what some other companies are doing. Some were charging whether you got an answer on the other end or not. How about extra fees just for calling a cell phone? Cards were being given out that included a large number of minutes but they would deduct minutes if the minutes were not used up during a single call. Cards sometimes expired only a short time after purchase and some that never worked at all. Post call fees, 99 cent hangup fees on cards that had little money on it at all, fees that happened if the card was used more than once, activation fees, maintenance fees, cards that are billed in three and four minute time periods even if the card holder only used it for a minute or less.

It is estimated that cards like that were only giving about 60 percent of the actual worth of the card. That is called fraud at least by some people. The problem is that there are companies out there, like the one that I have a card for, that are up front. That does not mean I like the idea of charging me a half hour of my time on the card just to use a pay phone. That is not right either. However, there is a probable case against the other companies, not so with the one that covers my card. Those fees will be considered fair…by them if no one else. I feel ripped off. I paid for the card and for the minutes long ago. I add to those minutes from time to time. I expect to receive minutes because that’s what I paid for but it ain’t so. And for heaven’s sake, do not let the thing expire or you lose it all!!! Sigh.

Some day, this will all go away. I just know it. In the meanwhile, we bought a cell phone. They charge us for every use except when we call a company cell or they call us. Then it’s no charge except for that pesky little first time of the day call fee. Do you see a pattern here? You cannot get away from it, can you?

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Today, I was reading about this thing with eBay cutting 1000 jobs. Hey, no one is going to question a company that’s having financial problems in this particular time, right? Well, I question it. Here’s why. eBay is cutitng jobs, not because they are having a bad year, quite the contrary. Their year is good. Bigger profits. Yes, and I know how. They changed their fees again recently. It cost more than ever to sell something on eBay. When I first joined, the fees were tiny. You could actually make a small income there. Now, the fees are getting higher and higher. More rules. More problems. Yet, they have a bigger profit than it appears since they are cutting jobs. So, what’s up? The company line is that they are streamlining the business. Uh huh.

In effect, they are cutting 10 percent of their workforce. Then, they are getting rid of the temps. Experts say that they will have restructuring charges in the millions. Guess who gets to pay for that? Actually, the consumer will only pay if the seller ups the prices to compensate for the fees. The big bywords here are “efficiency” and “savings”. And that sounds great. It won’t help the consumer but what the heck. And why are we doing all this, eBay?

While I was reading all this in an article, it occurred to me that if they had bigger profits and were still cutting jobs, there had to be a reason beyond the two bywords. Just made sense. And I found it way down at the bottom of the article, just a couple of sentences. It pretty much said that they were buying three companies. This is happening as they are cutting jobs! The companies they are acquiring are: Bill Me Later which is an online payments company which will be part of Paypal soon. That’s already owned by eBay. Then there are two foreign companies: Danish classifieds site dba.dk and vehicles site bilbasen.dk. Did I mention the sales tag on these?

Bill Me Later: $820 million in cash and $125 million in outstanding options. Some savings here and plenty of efficiency, right?
Danish classifieds site dba.dk and vehicles site bilbasen.dk: $390 million in cash

And they needed to drop 1000 jobs to do this. Right.

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It is with a great deal of pleasure that I can safely say that the price of gas has gone down here to the lowest we have seen in a while now. At the lowest priced pump in our area, the tag reads $3.29 as of yesterday. Nice. Not nice enough to happy dance but certainly on the way to being a happy dance moment. That moment would come only when the price got below one dollar so it is unlikely that I will ever have to do that dance but the thought is good anyway. The problem is that we may not see this price going down much longer.

OPEC cut production again. Of course, that tends to cause shortages like the one in the southeast that has been going on for a couple weeks now and no one sees it letting up anytime soon. Okay, I will ask the question. What happened? Why is there a shortage on the east coast that no one else seems to be having? Guess I missed the media hype on that one. If anyone can answer that, I will certainly listen.

Prices on food and goods should go down now that gas prices are declining. Yet, I get the feeling that we are in for a rough Christmas season anyway. So, now would be the time to get in on those sales and the online extreme bargains. Do your research. That should be my second line on this blog, I say it often enough. Do your research. You can find good deals even in these sad times if you do a little work. Computers are marvelous inventions. They can be used for many things and research is one of them. Then go shopping. Get those deals that will not be there in December. A case in point would be the Wii console. Not a shot those will be available in December unless you happen on that one guy that still has one left to sell. Right now, they are still available in several locations in brick and mortar stores and online. But Christmas is coming on fast. Too fast, if you ask me. ACK!

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I can’t believe I wrote that title but it appears to be true, nevertheless. What I have found is that for those who own a Wii (you lucky dogs…well, I don’t believe in luck but..) getting fit is a whole lot easier. See, I am looking for Christmas presents and I ran across this thing. No one in our family has a Wii so it won’t work for us but I thought I would pass this along to someone who might just have one and want to get fit. It’s called a Wii Fit. Go figure. So, do your research here because this item is apparently in great demand. If you are going to get one for Christmas as a present, I would strongly suggest getting it now and before the supplies run out.

Now, what is it? I can best describe it as a platform that you stand on to play the games. I cannot tell you that the thing will make your breakfast for you but it sure does a whole lot of other things. You get to do aerobics, sports, muscle stretches and balance games. Uh, that one would be a problem for me but hey, I don’t have a Wii so no problem there. Now this is a list of the balance games available with this board: Soccer, Ski Slalom, Ski Jump, Table Tilt, Tightrope Walk, Balance Bubble, Penguin Slide, Snowboard Slalom and Lotus Focus. And the Wii Fit has the ability to keep track of your fitness progress. Not bad at all! I’d like to point out that for those who live in areas that see a lot of cold and snow or ice, this combined with the Nintendo Wii would make one heck of a good exercise program in the winter time.

The product description says this is great for the whole family. Looks to me like it would be a great way to have some quality family time together. I took a look at reviews on this product from some buyers. The over all ratings are good. One complaint I guess you would call it is that they stated that it is not really a game but a way to do your exercise. The thing does ask objectives and it would be unlikely that your child under the age of 11 or 12 would care about that part. However, it is still a fun way to lose weight plus the kids would still like the skiing and soccer, I am sure. Looks like fun to me.

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An industrial chemical called melamine is the cause for the tainted milk products that China produced. Recall after recall happening for products that came from China are causing more and more concern over whether people in this country ought to be buying things with the China label at all. Our family has decided that if it’s from China, it is not worth the risk. This newest scare is just one of many causing a scandal of giant proportions involving everything from baby formula to chocolate. Latest testing in batches of the milk powder has proven to be eye opening. 100 batches have been tested, all having the chemical in them. 4 deaths and many illnesses have been attributed to the tainted milk powder.

Often when such stories come out, it is assumed or verified that the cause is an accident. Something in the environment of the factory caused the problem. No so with this particular tainted milk powder story. It is believed that the company involved at the center of the problem and some suppliers were trying to boost sales by diluting the powder with melamine which has high nitrogen content. This fools the testing into showing more protein content. Melamine is normally used to make plastics and fertilizers.

Apparently it wasn’t enough to try to boost sales, the individuals and companies involved were then trying to cover up the situation. Many have been forced to resign. Others were ignoring the safety officials and doctors concerning this very hazardous situation. Included in the scandal is a cheesecake product that was for the Japanese market.

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