If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck ......

Blogspam! I monitor the comments on this blog, because there is blogspam. What is blogspam? Someone gives you a compliment on your blog, and suggests a product or service you can use (or not). This is an underhanded attempt to get free advertising on someone else's blog. Today, I received this comment to moderate:

"Hello I really enjoyed reading your blog. I spend a lot of time reading blogs and I thought this blog was done very well. In fact if I were you I would go to autosurfmonster dot com and submit this blog so thousands of others can see it for free. Well , I look forward to all the updates, thanks again!!Jessica"

So then I went to the touted website, and it looked harmless enough. But who knows? In the movie, "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer," a vampire begs to be invited into a house, because the rules say that he can't come in unless invited. So I resisted clicking on the link to join. It might be the equivalent of inviting the vampire in. I once clicked on a malicious website, and in an instant, there were so many viruses and trojans infecting my computer, that even my keyboard became inoperative. It cost me time, money, and a lot of aggravation to get it straightened out. So I held back on clicking.

Then, I looked the website up on Google. I got a few blogs that had mentioned it. One touted it, then retracted it, saying that autosurfmonster dot com was not what it was cracked up to be, and that the blogger was retracting his recommendation. Then I found another blog with the website mentioned on it. The blog was called "Ain't Chicken." And, I'll be damned, but the wording was so similar, and the blogger reasoned that anyone can see his blog for free, even if they haven't registered with auto surf monster. I concur.

Another thing, the comment was put on by someone calling herself/himself Jessica, but signed it anonymous. Who, or what is Jessica, anyway?

Moral: Be cynical, and trust very little on the 'net. The computer you save could be your own.

Two Areas To Save Big - Stop With The Ringtones and Movies

I know I am going to incur the wrath of many viewers when I introduce two practical ideas for saving a buck: Stop with the ringtones for one, and stop buying movies.

For what real pragmatic reason does someone have to have a special ringtone? The young will give their rationale for purchasing, and sometimes renting special ring-tones. They will pay more for a part of a song than a whole song. Think ahead 5 years, look at what you are spending on this, and see if it will make a whole bunch of sense to purchase a jingle at $2.50, or worse, rent it for a limited time. Are you trying to impress your friends? They already know who and what you are. Are you trying to impress strangers? Will it matter 10 minutes after they are out of sight? So, a ringtone will alert you if a certain friend is calling, but so will the caller ID on the phone. It isn't cool if you have to pay for it. It isn't even bright.

The second idea to save is not to buy mainstream movies. Movies are archived everywhere. How many times are you going to watch any movie? I know people with extensive collections of movies on DVDs. Even if they got a buy at $10.00, you can rent that movie a lot of times for $2.00 each time. Unless you have to watch the Wizard of Oz every time you feel blue, why the hell do you need to own it? If you own a collection, you are always adding to it, and don't have time to watch any movie over again, anyway. If I want to see a movie over again, I can rent it. Blockbuster and Netflix offer deals all the time, anyway. I got a free month of all the movies I can watch in a month from Blockbuster recently. I will cancel before the month is out. I will bet that Blockbuster will offer me the same deal again in the near future. While you spend $50 buying movies you may never get around to watching again, I saved enough to go to the Red Lobster for dinner and I saw just as many movies as you did.

Here's another thought. If you haven't noticed, it is hard to buy a new stand-alone VHS tape deck at this time. The VHS technology is being phased out. How do you know DVDs won't be replaced in 10 years with something better, and you won't be able to buy a replacement player to see all your movies? You say you can copy all your stuff to new media? Well, do you have time for that, now? I doubt it will be something you will do in the future, with many more movies to copy. Thousands of DVDs will be left for the ages, monuments to your need to own them, and the movie industry's need to make money.

Add up what you spend for this stuff, and see if it is all really worth it to you. As Garfield, the cartoon cat, once remarked, "It's amazing what people would really rather have than money."

Telephones Sometimes Give Better Deals Than The 'Net

I decided to make the plunge the other day, and buy a large external hard drive for my 'puter. I already have an 80-gig internal drive on my Dell, and a 200-gig external USB Maxtor drive, but the internal is filled with large photographs, and the 200-gig is the back-up. I want to clear the 80-gig internal of almost all photos, and use the 200-gig as the main photo repository. After looking at many of these drives, and realizing that whatever I buy will eventually fill up with my work, I wanted to get a drive from 500-gigs to 1-terabyte. Now, prices for these things vary. 1-tb drives are no less than around $700.00 and I have seen some over $1K. That's a lot of scratch. One-half a terabyte (500-gigs) prices are dropping, and I decided to go that route. Currently, I could buy two half-tb drives for much less than a 1-tb drive. I researched the price and found Office Depot would sell one: A 500-gb, 7200 rpm, USB 2.0, external Western Digital hard drive for $279.00.

My wife had an "anniversary card" from Dell that ballyhooed their "copper anniversary," and offered a 15-percent discount with a coupon number input to their website. I didn't think of Dell, because I thought they'd be too expensive. I looked up their drives, and to my surprise, they were selling almost exactly the same drive for $10.00 less than Office Depot. If worse came to worse, I could use that price to get the same pricing from Office Depot. Then the 15% came back into focus. I would have to pay shipping and tax with Dell, but the 15% would mean a savings of over $35.00! I put one in my Dell online shopping cart to see what the shipping would be. I had to put in the coupon number to get the discount. It refused my coupon number. I tried again. Same result. There was a phone number on the card. I called and got a great salesman on the line. He was able to bring up the coupon and the drive in my shopping cart. He tried the coupon number, and same result. The salesman then asked me to wait while he checked with his supervisor. He came back and said, "Success." I asked how much the drive was going to cost. He said $229.49. I asked about the shipping. He said Free! The total with tax was $248.77. I figured I saved over $50.00 on the drive, after taxes were added. I asked how his supervisor was able to get the 15%. He stated that he couldn't do it either, but they wanted to make a sale and make me a happy Dell customer, so they discounted it anyway. The website would never have done this. Moral: If there is a phone number, call it. You may get a better deal than dealing with a computer.

It Doesn't Always Work!

I wanted to buy a 1-gigabyte SanDisk Secure Digital Card for our new Canon A620 camera. Almost everybody and their brother sells this particular card. Sears, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, etc., all sell the SDSD1024A10 flash memory card. Prices are also all over the board. Office Max sells it for $49.98. Office Depot for $29.99. Staples for $24.98 after $16.00 in-store discount and $15.00 mail-in rebate. I found a place online called dz-tech storefront on pricegrabber.com that was selling it for $14.45! But they charge $9.45 shipping and insurance to deliver it, bringing the total to $23.90. All the other stores, being local, charge 8.4% sales tax on the out-the-door price. No tax on the out of state online storefront.

I called Sears to see if they would match the price of the online store. They would not. They will only compete with other bricks-and-mortar stores. Then I remembered that the camera I recently purchased was being sold online by a bricks-and-mortar store called Norman Camera. That's possibly why there was no argument. I could have called some more places, and they may have told me that they would honor that price, but I felt they probably would not, once I got there. I ordered it from dz-tech and we'll see if that was the best way to go. Their price was much better than the other outfits, when you factored in the sales tax. And I didn't have to burn $3.00 per gallon gas to get it. I'll be getting it by first-class mail.

Getting My Cable Bill Reduced With No Loss Of Service

Ah! Competition. Ya gotta love it. Use one company to get concessions from another. My wife has been after me to change to DSL from cable, because of the cost of Internet access. Qwest has been bombarding us to change all of our services to them: phones, cell phones, television, and internet access. We have Qwest as our phone company. We get a nice deal from them, including long distance. I don't know how they would be at the other things. They keep marketing that they will give us DSL for something like $29.99 per month. Now, I have had DSL in the past, and it was fast. But I gotta tell you, I have had cable with Comcast for almost 2 years now, and cable is faster. But, I am paying $45.95 per month for it. I don't want to change to DSL for a number of reasons. I would have to get new equipment. I would have to set it up. I would have to get a new personal email address. I would be unable to access the net for a time. And, DSL is slowwwer!

So I decided to call Comcast, and negotiate. I figure that some of their customers have gone to DSL because of the price. I keep getting adverts from Comcast telling me that if I am a new customer, they will give me 4 months of cable internet for $24.95, but it will go up to the regular price after that. I call and tell the guy at the other end that I am constantly getting pitched by Qwest, at quite a reduction in price, and isn't there anything he can do for me so I can tell my wife that it pays to stick with Comcast. He says that he knows Qwest is trying to pull me away, but that cable is way faster. I tell him that the blazing speed of cable, while nice, isn't absolutely necessary for me (whether true or not), and that I need a break in the price. He says the best he can do is reduce the price to $29.99 per month for the next six months. He can't do any more than that. At this point, this is sufficient. I am saving $15.95 per month, almost $96 for that period of time. To me, that is the equivalent of 2 tankfulls of gas, or couple of nice dinners at the Olive Garden. I'll take it. And, it only cost me a 7-minute phone call. Remember, you only get benefits when you ask for them.

Dealing with Dell

My last four computers have been purchased from Dell. I have always been plagued by my own definition of Moore's Law: something like, that computers will do twice as much, for half the price, within 18 months. I feel that whatever I buy, I will be looking at something better within one month. Either the new contraption will be more powerful for roughly the same expenditure, or what I am buying will go down in price in a short time period. Dell has, in the past, had a 30-day refund policy, in that if you buy something, and they lower the price on it within 30 days of your purchase, they will give it to you at a lower price - but only if you call them on it!! All four of my Dell boxes were purchased in this way. Each has yielded about $100.00 credited to my credit card at about the 28-day mark. I make a note to call them within 28 days of my purchase. Since all of the Dell units was custom-built, I cannot cite a competitor selling the same one for less. Only Dell can compete with Dell in this respect. They have always honored their price guarantee, at least with me. Look for similar deals from similar sellers.

Sears Television Refund

Several months ago, I wanted to purchase a high-definition wide-screen television. You may not agree with my choice, but I decided I wanted a DLP 42" Samsung. Now, I had to decide where to buy it. I went to Circuit City, Best Buy, Sears, and a few other stores, to get an idea of whom to buy from. The price was better in some stores than from others. Sears was the closest store to me, and they had the lowest-price + 10% guarantee, as well (some of the others did, too). I brought in a newspaper ad from Circuit City (who had the lowest price at the time), and the salesman at Sears sold it to me at that price minus 10%. At the time, the set cost me around $2,000.00 + tax. He also told me that if I found a lower published advertised price within 30 days, I would get a refund of the difference, + 10% (+ the tax difference).

Two weeks later, I got a bunch of ads with the Sunday newspaper, and lo and behold, the set was advertised by Best Buy at around $1,800.00. I promptly took the ad to Sears, and they credited my credit card the difference + 10%. About 28 days after my purchase, another merchant in town was selling the same set for the unbelievably low price of $1,600.00! I again went to Sears, and produced the ad. You guessed it - they ponied up again + 10% (+ tax difference).

While it is true that if you wait long enough to buy something, you can probably get a reduced price, I was watching the NFL for a whole month in HD, and got it for the price I would have paid, had I bought it a month later.

By the way, I haven't purchased any of the additional warranties offered from these stores. The TV came with a one-year factory warranty. If any electronic product lasts out that first year, it generally has been my experience that it will outlast the additional policy. They wouldn't be offering it if it wasn't a safe bet for them, for the most part.

Using your computer and internet to save big!

I decided to start this blog the other day, when I wanted to buy a new digital point-and-shoot camera for my wife and business partner. She and I are pro photographers (see my photography blog at http://learnarchitecturalphotography.blogspot.com/ and see our website at http://weshoot.com/ ). She had always carried a point-and-shoot film camera in her purse, and the other day, the battery died. It takes a special lithium battery, which is not cheap. Since digital pretty much has taken over, costs less to operate (no film), and the cameras are now very cheap (relatively), I felt going digital here was a good investment. First lesson: If you don't already have film cameras, don't invest in them.

Now, my first requisite was finding a camera that had two attributes: It would have to be 6 megapixels or larger (so the photographic stock agencies will accept the images), and that the monitor screen and the lens were covered or protected in her purse. Her old camera spent many years in her purse, and rubbed up against everything in there. It was covered with scratches. I found a supposedly discontinued camera called a Canon Powershot A620 (See photos) that would fill the bill nicely. I looked it up on the Internet and got prices all over the board from $215.95 to over $300.00 (same camera, same accessories)

Now, there are cameras out there with less megapixels that cost more, but this one fits our needs. Its screen closes and protects the monitor from scratches, the lens closes up when the camera is not switched on, and it is a 7.1 megapixel camera.

I actually hate buyinng an expensive item like a camera online. I don't have to pay sales tax online, but I usually have to pay shipping. If it is damaged when I receive it, I have to go through steps to send it back, sometimes waiting on the phone, or finding out how to do that on a company's website. Then I may have to pay for shipping to send it back. I would have to package, and label it. Then it needs to be shipped.

Fortunately, I found this same camera at OfficeMax. It was selling for $249.95 + tax ($270.95) there. Remember, I found this camera online at Norman Camera (through PriceGrabber.com) for $215.95 + shipping. Solution: OfficeMax will sell you any item at any other real company's advertised published price. Even if it is published on the web! I printed out the sale price at Norman Camera, along with the accessories list of what came with the camera on the front and back of one sheet of paper.

I took it with me to Office Max and the lady who waited on me was happy to accommodate me. She accepted the published price from Norman Camera, and at my partner's urging, looked to see if there was some other discounts she could give. She complied, and we walked out the door with our new camera priced at $200.95 + tax for a total of $217.83, beating the price from Norman Camera, if you include the shipping. I had saved $53.12 at Office Max with a little homework!

I was going to buy a 1-gigabyte card while I was there, but decided to see what the brands and models they had there went for online first. Who knows, I might just do well there, too.

Preface

First, let me say that I am a proponent of not spending money, at all. I don't have much of it, and need as much of it as I can get just to keep my head above water. I am not cheap, and like to eat well (includes going to restaurants), drive a nice car that isn't breaking down all the time, and live in a house, rather than an apartment. At the moment, I have achieved that. I want to help others achieve what they want, and this blog may facilitate that. It takes work to save money when you are spending it. Some of it is relatively easy. Some takes some planning. Some will take steady nerves. Sometimes it involves negotiating, or haggling. Sometimes it involves being willing to get up and walk away from a deal.

Some of you already are using tactics to save lots of cash. If you have something to add, post a comment, I will evaluate it, and publish it in this blog with appropriate credit to you. I will not allow comments to go in without vetting them. There are already too many "blog spammers" out there. Have fun, and save!