November 25th, 2009 | Posted in Finance Management
Avoid bank and retailer fees and other big money wasters this year.
Holiday time is tough enough on your budget. You don’t want to spend more than you planned because a retailer or credit-card company came up with some tricky way to squeeze more money out of you. Well, you can beat the system! You just need to know where to look for these sneaky shopping traps.
Trap No. 1
Hidden debit-card fees
Whipping out your debit card to pay for holiday goodies probably seems like a budget-friendly idea because the cash is immediately withdrawn from your account. No need to worry about paying interest on a credit card or fees for bounced checks. But using a debit card could end up costing you a lot more than you’d think. In the past banks would reject a debit purchase that was more than the amount you had in your account. But many banks now process the purchase-and then hit you with an overdraft fee. Those charges range from $25 to $35 at 16 of the largest banks, according to a July Consumer Federation of America survey. If you buy several gifts in one day and use your debit card to pay for gas, groceries, and lattes, you could be hit with multiple fees. In September, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo announced plans to lower or eliminate overdraft fees. Let’s hope other banks will follow suit.
Dodge it! Use a credit card for large purchases, especially if you pay the full balance each month. Credit cards give you a lot more protection than other forms of payment if your account number falls into the wrong hands or if you have a legitimate beef with a seller and want to dispute a charge. Use a debit card only for small purchases if you’re relatively certain you won’t need the extra protection a credit card provides and you’re sure you won’t go over your balance.
Trap No. 2
Phony sales
Many highly promoted “door buster” sales, particularly ones that take place on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and the following Cyber Monday, offer deep discounts on hot-ticket items. Black Friday has earned the reputation as a bargain-hunter’s dream because retailers feature a limited quantity of high-profile, attention-grabbing toys or electronic items at or below cost to draw you in, hoping you’ll also purchase lots of full-price merchandise. There’s a more deceptive version of deep-discount sales, though: An item is advertised at a superlow price on a Web site, but it’s a phony come-on. The goal is to get you to buy something else and spend much more. If you try to buy just the sale item, you’ll often find that the retailer cancels the sale, claims the product has been back-ordered for months, or sends you lower-quality merchandise or items that you never ordered. Returns can be difficult, if not impossible.
Dodge it! To protect yourself when you’re shopping online, be wary of unrealistically low prices. Don’t make a purchase if you’re pressured to buy additional products or services. To be supersafe, stick with merchants you know. Also, follow these other tips:
* If you go to a door-buster sale, don’t buy other items in the store unless you have done the research ahead of time and know they’re a good deal.
* Don’t worry about missing a one-day sale. It’s very likely that another supersale will come along. Last year we found plenty of so-called one-day sales that were extended.
* If someone on your list wants this year’s hot item, hit the stores as soon as you can. Go early to beat the crowds or try online. Last year we found that online retailers sometimes offered special savings early in the morning.
Trap No. 3
Unnecessary warranties
This holiday season, shoppers are expected to spend more than a billion dollars on extended warranties. Appliance and electronics retailers push shoppers to buy extended warranties or service plans because the store keeps 50 percent or more of what they charge for them. That’s much more than they can make just selling the products. But extended warranties are notoriously bad deals because some repairs are already covered by the standard manufacturer’s warranty that comes with the product. And our data show that products seldom break within the period the extended warranty covers — after the standard warranty has expired and within two to three years of purchase. When electronics and appliances do break, the repairs, on average, cost about the same as an extended warranty.
Dodge it! Our decades of brand research have shown that products are reliable enough that we don’t think you need extended warranties. But if you’d like the peace of mind an extended warranty can provide, you might be able to get similar coverage by charging the item on a credit card. Check your card agreement; some cards, especially gold and platinum ones, lengthen the original manufacturer’s warranty by as much as one year. If you can’t rely on your card’s additional coverage, channel your inner Scrooge. Get the cheapest deal you can on an extended warranty by including the cost of one in your price comparison. Always try to negotiate a better deal. And don’t pay more than 20 percent of an item’s purchase price for any warranty.
Trap No. 4
Gift-card charges
Sure, buying gift cards can shorten your holiday shopping time. You don’t have to rack your brain to come up with an appropriate gift for the hard-to-please folks on your list or spend hours hunting for whatever present you settle on. But we advise shoppers to avoid gift cards. Some come with purchasing and processing fees, expiration dates, transaction fees, and inactivity fees that unfairly diminish their value over time. And the recipient could end up with a worthless piece of plastic if a company goes out of business or files for bankruptcy protection after you buy its card. There’s also a good chance your card will not be used. A quarter of the people we surveyed last November still hadn’t used a gift card they received during the previous holiday season.
Dodge it! In one bit of good gift-card news, American Express announced in September that it would no longer impose fees on its gift cards — but it will still charge you $3 to $7 to buy one. Consider giving cash instead of any gift cards issued by credit-card companies, banks, or malls. If you do buy a gift card, stick to those issued by retailers, which are relatively free of expiration dates and pesky fees.
Trap No. 5
Return fees
Many electronics items, especially cameras, camcorders, computers, monitors, printers, scanners, projectors, PDAs, and GPS devices, are subject to a 15 to 25 percent restocking fee if they are returned opened or if they’re not in a factory-sealed box. If you return a refurbished item, it might be subject to a restocking fee, too. You might even be charged a 15 percent restocking fee for some appliances, tools, and lawn-and-garden products if you don’t return them in their original packaging. Merchants can’t resell as new any item after the package has been opened, so they penalize you for opening it.
Dodge it! Don’t open the package if you don’t want what’s inside. Items like computer software, music CDs, and movie DVDs aren’t generally returnable for another title after the seal has been broken. But if you do break a seal, some stores will give you a partial refund of a restocking fee if you ask. You should not have to pay a restocking fee if the item was defective when you unwrapped it. And always find out about a store’s return policy before you buy. Things like restocking fees and limits on what you can return vary among retailers, and some retailers have a different policy online than they do in their stores.
Provided by ConsumerReports.org
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November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Interesting Tech
So your new laptop computer died in inside of a year. “I’ll never buy a computer from [insert manufacturer name here] again!” I’ve heard the protests time and time again.
Yeah, maybe you got a lemon, but no matter which brand you bought, you truly are not alone in this situation: An analysis of 30,000 new laptops from SquareTrade, which provides aftermarket warranty coverage for electronics products, has found that in the first three years of ownership, nearly a third of laptops (31 percent) will fail.
That’s actually better than I would have expected based on my experience and observations on how people treat their equipment.
SquareTrade has more detailed information (the full PDF of the company’s study is available here) on the research on its website. But here are some highlights about how, why, and which laptops fail:
> 20.4 percent of failures are due to hardware malfunctions. 10.6 percent are due to drops, spills, or other accidental damage.
> Netbooks have a roughly 20 percent higher failure rate due to hardware malfunctions than standard laptops. The more you pay for your laptop, the less likely it is to fail in general (maybe because you’re more careful with it?).
> The most reliable companies? A shocker: Toshiba and Asus, both with below a 16 percent failure rate due to hardware malfunction.
> The least reliable brands? Acer, Gateway, and HP. HP’s hardware malfunction rate, the worst in SquareTrade’s analysis, is a whopping 25.6 percent.
None of the numbers are overly surprising. As SquareTrade notes, “the typical laptop endures more use and abuse than nearly any other consumer electronic device (with the possible exception of cell phones),” so failures are really inevitable.
Want to keep your notebook running for longer than a few years? Ensure your laptop is as drop-proofed as possible (use a padded bag or case, route cords so they won’t be tripped on, lock children in another room), and protect it as best you can from heat and dust.
By Christopher Null
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November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Strange Facts
Here are a few things bargain-hungry consumers need to know before they hit stores before dawn the day after Thanksgiving.
Here’s a Black Friday reality check: Of the hordes of pre-dawn shoppers who line up for hours outside stores on the day after Thanksgiving, most will not bag the best bargains that appear in merchants’ circulars.
Look at the fine print that appears next to an advertised “doorbuster deal” at the bottom of the page in this year’s circulars.
It will either say “While supplies last,” “Minimum 2 per store,” “No rainchecks” or “All items are available in limited quantities.”
A quick scan through a few of this year’s Black Friday circulars show quantities as low as a “minimum of 5 per store” on some models of large plasma and HDTVs and popular brands of home appliances such as a washer-dryer pair.
Should Black Friday deal hunters feel cheated? Yes they should, say some retail experts.
“It’s a sleazy practice,” said Craig Johnson, retailing expert and president of retail consulting group Customer Growth Partners.
“I am old school,” said Johnson. “If a retailer is advertising a juicy deal and they are not prepared to have in sufficient quantity, don’t advertise it. Or give consumers a raincheck.”
Johnson said it’s not enough for retailers to mention that they’ll have such limited quantities of a product on one of the most-hyped shopping days of the year.
“Retailers aren’t winning any customers. They are just pissing off people,” he said. “It’s poor retailing practice.”
Unfortunately for consumers, more examples abound.
CNNMoney.com spoke to industry experts to uncover a few dirty secrets of Black Friday deals.
Limited quantities: Advertising a Black Friday deal as “limited quantities” is bogus, said Johnson.
“The only time it makes sense to have only two or three [items] in stock is if the deal is on a $2 million gift product that appears in the Neiman Marcus holiday catalog,” he said.
Edgar Dworsky, a consumer advocate and editor of Consumer World, agreed with Johnson.
“C’mon guys. Give me a break,” said Dworsky. “How can you be the size of a retailer like Sears and only get a minimum of five per store, yet devote big space in your circular to advertise that deal?
Sears (SHLD, Fortune 500) has not officially revealed its Black Friday sales. However, the company confirmed to CNNMoney.com that two of its post-Thanksgiving deals include a Samsung 40-inch 1080p LCD HDTV for $599.99, “Only while quantities last, minimum three per store, no rainchecks.”
The other is a Kenmore 3.5-cubic-foot high-efficiency washer and 5.8-cubic foot dryer pair for $579.98, “Limit four per store, no rainchecks.”
“Sure, you probably have more, but how do you put out a circular to millions of households and only have three?,” Dworsky asked.
When asked for a comment, Sears spokesman Tom Aiello said he was “not comfortable” addressing the issue of limited quantities for some Black Friday deals.
Such short supply on deals are not only annoying but can also be dangerous to Black Friday shoppers.
“We saw the stampede at a Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) store in New York last year on Black Friday that led to an employee’s death,” said Burt Flickinger, managing director of consulting firm Strategic Resource Group. “The stampede happened because so many of the deals were advertised as limited supply.”
One retailer, while not explaining why its advertised deals are in such limited supplies, said it is taking measures to better handle the Black Friday rush.
“From going down the line and handing out doorbuster tickets that guarantee a purchase in advance of the store opening, to printing the minimum quantities in the circular, we go to great lengths to ensure that the Black Friday consumer knows exactly how many items will be at the store and whether or not they will be able to purchase one prior to entering the store,” Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) wrote in an e-mail.
What do you mean this HDTV is a “derivative?” Some of the holiday electronics with those low sale prices are derivatives, models that have a few less features than a standard model in that product line, said Dworsky.
The difference can be subtle. “The image contrast ratio might be 20,000 in a derivative model versus 30,000 in a standard model,” he said. “Most consumers probably won’t even notice the difference.”
A report earlier this month in Consumer Reports called attention to HDTV models from Samsung and Sony advertised in Black Friday deals that appear to be “derivatives.” The report said these one-off TVs “with unfamiliar model numbers” are usually cheaper than the standard model in their class.
Dworsky cautions that retailers usually don’t advertise these models as derivatives. “There’s no way the average consumer will know that the TV model they are buying is not the standard one unless they are savvy enough to compare their model numbers,” he said.
Which Black Friday deals are online? “Many retailers will say that their Black Friday deals are available online,” said Dworsky. “But they’re not nice enough to tell you which ones.”
“How about telling me which exact ones so I can shop online from home and I’m not in my pajamas at 5 a.m. in front of your store,” he said.
Online deals that never get shipped: Case in point: Sears. Last year, one of Sears’ hottest Black Friday doorbuster deal was on a Kenmore washer-dryer pair for $600.
Even though the retailer advertised that deal to be in “limited quantities,” the company decided to honor every customer order made on that deal last Black Friday.
Big mistake. The manufacturer could not ramp up production fast enough. Some customers waited months before their order was shipped. Others were sold a substitute model, that was “comparable or even better” for the same deal price, said Sears’ Aiello.
Lesson learned. “We will not be doing that again this year,” he said.
Be careful if you’re shopping online on Black Friday, said Dworsky.
“Since retailers don’t have a live inventory online you run the risk of getting an e-mail weeks later that your order had been delayed or worse, canceled, because the product is out of stock,” he said.
About those rainchecks: Finally, if a retailer does offer you a raincheck on a deal, it could still turn out to be an empty promise, Flickinger warned.
“A raincheck doesn’t guarantee that you will eventually get that elusive Black Friday deal,” he said. “Consumers can go weeks waiting and hoping, and the retailer may never get more of the product shipped to its stores.”
Copyrighted, CNNMoney. All Rights Reserved.
CNNMoney.com
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November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Important Career
A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.
Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife.
But the payments dried up this fall and when Blanchard called Manulife, she says she was told she was available to work because of Facebook.
She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.
Blanchard said Manulife told her it’s evidence she is no longer depressed. She’s fighting to get her benefits reinstated and says her lawyer is exploring what the next step should be.
Blanchard told the CBC that on her doctor’s advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems.
Manulife wouldn’t comment on Blanchard’s case, but did say they would not deny or terminate a claim solely based on information published on Web sites such as Facebook.
By Associated Press – ap.org
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November 12th, 2009 | Posted in Human, Love and Life
Friendship woes don’t end in junior high. We all mess up sometimes and end up hurting a friend’s feelings. But now that we’re adults, we can forgive each other as long as we know the mess-up wasn’t intentional. If you’ve ever forgotten your pal’s birthday, or had an eye on her ex, here’s how to make things right and move on.
Faux Pas #1: You Forgot Her Birthday
The moment you realize the date got away from you, “offer an apology, but not an excuse,” says Irene Levine, PhD, professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, and author of Best Friends Forever. An “oops” birthday card or gift and an offer to buy her a drink or lunch are good moves. Remember, too, that how much your friend is hurt by your forgetfulness depends on her birthday-importance meter. If she’s super-sensitive (what Dr. Levine calls a “birthday princess”), you may have to work harder to get back in her good graces.
Faux Pas #2: You Don’t Like Her Husband
Leave her hubby out of the friendship as much as you can; it’s not fair to force her to divide her loyalties, especially if she knows he’s not your favorite person. “Remind her how important her friendship is to you, and restrict your time together to girls only,” says Dr. Levine. Employ a little diplomacy (or a harmless white lie): no reason you have to detail to her what you don’t like about her man.
Faux Pas #3: You Are (or Want to Be) Dating Her Ex
“I’m sure there are friends who have navigated this successfully without causing hurt feelings, but my general advice would be, if you want to keep the friend, avoid the ex,” says Elaine Zelley, PhD, associate communications professor at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, who has studied female friendships. This is particularly true if it’s a recent breakup, but even long-ago exes can stir up a world of emotion. If you’re already involved, be prepared for a painful adjustment period—or even the long-term loss of your friend. But if you’re only in the contemplation stage, “talk to her about it, honestly,” says Dr. Zelley, which is the only way you can hope to emerge with your friendship intact.
Faux Pas #4: You Weren’t There for Her at a Crucial Time
Don’t make excuses or offer justifications (“I was just so busy that month!”). “That only trivializes her experience and makes it seem that your life is more important than hers,” says Dr. Zelley. Instead, admit that you let her down, and that you realize how bad your absence made her feel. Ask, humbly and sincerely, if there’s anything you can do to make it up to her. Then let it go; depending on how hurt she is (and how much other support she had at the time), it may take time for the friendship to fully heal.
Faux Pas #5: You Were Late to Meet Her
You have to apologize, of course, and offer something to assuage her annoyance, such as picking up the lunch tab. If it’s a recurring problem, “you’re giving her the message that your time is more valuable than hers,” says Dr. Levine. Chronic lateness can seriously damage a friendship. Acknowledge that it’s you who has a punctuality problem; it’s nothing she did. Together, come up with a solution, such as meeting someplace she doesn’t mind waiting (a bookstore rather than a street corner), or meeting at your home instead.
Faux Pas #6: You Didn’t Call Her Back…for Months
Don’t keep putting off calling her—just do it. If you truly have no excuse, “a white lie may be in order,” says Dr. Levine (overtime at work, or a needy family member monopolizing your time). But keep it short and sweet, and then launch right into catching each other up on news. Remember, too, that different friendships have a different “pace,” says Dr. Levine. If this is a friendship that normally allows time to elapse between calls, it may not be as big a deal as you imagine.
Faux Pas #7: You Didn’t Tell Her When Something She Did Hurt You
“If what your friend did was a one-time event that isn’t likely to happen again, weigh the cost versus the benefit of telling her how you felt,” says Dr. Zelley. Her advice: “Only reveal the hurt if the benefit—a deeper level of trust and understanding in the friendship—outweighs the cost,” otherwise you could be creating distance in the friendship. But if what she did was so hurtful you’re not sure you can spend time with her without it bugging you, talk to her. Keep it simple: “I overheard you talking to Gina about my infertility problems, which I’d asked you to keep private.” Give her a chance to apologize, and see if you can regain trust again.
By Denise Schipani
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