Comments for Mighty Bargain Hunter

Comment on Convenience credit card users are not perfect customers by VT

VT — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:26:19 +0000

What Aryn said. I use my rewards cards to pay for nearly everything. Seems to me that if I dump a card over a fee, the issuer is going to lose several times that amount in merchant fees.
Or perhaps they’re all trying to drive us to debit cards

Comment on Carnival of Debt Reduction time! by The Digerati Life

The Digerati Life — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:48:24 +0000

Thanks for the carnival John! Nice compact list here. I enjoy reading about debt pay off stories — they’re always inspiring.

Comment on Convenience credit card users are not perfect customers by Aryn

Aryn — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:07:43 +0000

Actually, the credit card companies DO make money from us responsible users. They collect a small percentage from every single transaction in the form of merchant fees. They collected $45 billion last year. As far as I’m concerned, that’s plenty.

Comment on Convenience credit card users are not perfect customers by Dr Dean

Dr Dean — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:58:52 +0000

MB, I too am wondering when the other shoe will drop, regarding fees on the cards I use. I have a fee card already-Delta/AmEx because the frequent travel benefits have always made sense financially-in my case. But a lot of the businesses here and in Central America, don’t take AMEX-so I have a Visa for “convenience” use. I will have to decide if the “convenience” is worth the fee when the time comes.

I agree,the companies in question are certainly in the business to make a profit, not to be our friend-if you can’t afford to play, don’t get into the game.

Comment on Carnival of Debt Reduction time! by Sam

Sam — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:10:04 +0000

Great stories. I appreciate the stories you have listed here. They are extremely helpful. This really helps give someone who might need ideas on how to reduce or completely pay off debt.

Comment on Why the tip jars are coming out by George

George — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:41:44 +0000

The reason there are more and more tip jars showing up is, our government passed a law which allows employers to pay tipped employees $2.13 an hour, rather than the normal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

What the tip credit law amounts to is, an employer can steal up to $5.13 an hour in tips from an employee who receives at least $5.13 in tips. Rather than stealing the money directly, employers simply deduct up to $5.13 an hour from the employee’s hourly wages.

Now that our government has passed a law allowing employers to steal a portion of their worker’s tips, businesses across our country are both soliciting tips and suggesting that customers should tip more. Just look at how the expectation of tips in restaurants has risen from what used to be 10% for good service to what is now 20-25% for good service.

The reason business want customers to tip and tip more is because our government is allowing them to steal the tips.

Comment on Seven ways to conquer Chuck E. Cheese by mbhunter

mbhunter — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:15 +0000

@Not a thief: Saying that an employee or a vendor stole the tokens is a huge assumption, and probably incorrect.

What is likely is that someone acquired the tokens legally (i.e., bought them), sold them to someone for far less than they paid for them, then that person sold them to me.

I saw nothing on the website or in the CEC location stating that the tokens used in the store must be purchased in the store. If the store changes its policy, then I won’t use them there.

But what purpose would that serve? Having tokens to spend gets me in CEC, where I have the opportunity to buy food (at very high markup).

Plus, the tokens aren’t free to the franchise owner. Every token I bring in from the outside is one he doesn’t have to buy.

Unless told otherwise, I will not agree that using genuine CEC tokens at CEC is stealing.

Comment on Seven ways to conquer Chuck E. Cheese by Not a thief

Not a thief — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:31:38 +0000

And just where do you think the tokens on eBay come from? CEC headquarters is not selling them.

Buying quantity tokens on eBay to use in the store is STEALING. It doesn’t matter if they were originally CEC tokens or otherwise. You are basically stealing tokens from one store to use at another. Buying tokens that way is putting money into the pockets of an employee or vendor that stole from one of the stores.

You are taking value from the store you are visiting without compensating them.

And the stores aren’t all company owned, so there is a fair chance you are cheating a small business owner out of their margin.

Taking something from person A, without compensating person A, is stealing. It means nothing to them that you paid person B something.

Comment on Carnival of Debt Reduction time! by LeanLifeCoach

LeanLifeCoach — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:09:52 +0000

John:

Thank you for the opportunity to join the Carnival! This was a first… may there be many more!

btw.. You have some great writing in this blog, keep up the good work!

Comment on Carnival of Debt Reduction time! by Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:24:36 +0000

Thanks for hosting!