Mighty Bargain Hunter

Random positive feedback for everyone!

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I logged into my eBay account and realized that I hadn’t left feedback for some of my recent buyers.  I was poking around the feedback section, which had changed a bit from what I remember.

Since sellers can no longer leave neutral or negative feedback for buyers, my job is a bit easier, I suppose.  But those thoughtful folks at eBay really have made it a no-brainer.  Now there’s an option to store up to ten feedbacks, and randomly apply the stored feedbacks to each buyer! 

I laughed at this.  Not that I pored over my thesaurus for hours to find exactly the right eighty characters to leave for each of my beloved buyers, but the integration of a random feedback generator into my admin panel is pretty funny.  I mean, I may as well have fun with it and put in phrases like this.  Or make up some good ones:

• May the chicken of despair never darken your doorstep, o wond’rous buyer.
• Bought at last, bought at last, thank God Almighty, you bought at last!!
• A million billion trillion thank-yous would nary be enough, your highness.

Does anyone actually read the positive feedback comments, anyway?  If I’m checking out a seller, I’m looking for the negatives, not the positives.  I want to see what bad might happen.  I pay absolutely no attention to the positive comments.

And as a seller leaving feedback, and not being able to say anything if it’s not nice, is there really anything else that I need to say beyond the customer sending me my money?

Further, does a prospective buyer look at the feedbacks left by sellers to see if they repeat themselves?  I don’t, but will potential buyers think less of me if they see that I repeat myself?

Basically, what purpose do sellers’ comments serve anymore?  Why shouldn’t I just leave random positive feedback for buyers?

Posted in EBay, Making Money, Shopping | 5 Comments »

For your cheap dining pleasure …

This hit my inbox at 9:42 AM …

Good today, tomorrow, and Thursday (through August 7th), a Restaurant.com coupon good for 50% off of $25 dining certificates and Dinner of the Month club memberships.

Use the coupon code GAMES to get $25 worth of qualifying dining expenses for only five bucks.

When the Olympics start, this deal stops, so snag some Restaurant.com dining certificates at half price!

Posted in Deals and Steals | No Comments »

How much will you fight for in the checkout line?

This article on Smart Spending tells about how Donna Freedman got an extra $3 off of five backpacks at Office Depot that were already on sale.  Here it was a question of what the coupons were actually good for — Is it good on sale items? On more than one item? — and Ms. Freedman won, getting five backpacks for $2.40 apiece, a 20% discount off the loss-leader price of $3 each.  Also, it seemed from her description of what transpired that the employees were interpreting the ads and coupons in more than one way.

Well, I had my own opportunity to argue with the cashier today at Food Lion, except it was for someone a little more pedestrian: the wrong price rang up on my canned beans.  I bought eight cans of beans — four cans of black beans and four cans of pinto beans, which I know you were asking yourself — and they rang up $0.67 when the price on the shelf was $0.62.

So we’re talking all of forty cents here.

I had already waited in line for a few minutes behind a woman with a full cart, and there were four carts behind me.  The cashier was more than willing to help me out with checking the price on the beans, but she would have had to go back herself to check the prices.  (They were short-staffed.)  I told her that it was all right and that I wasn’t going to hold up everyone else for 40 cents if I could just explain it to customer service later, which I could.

I paid the higher price for the beans, took my receipt over to the assistant manager (who was packing groceries) and he went back to check the price for me and fixed it right there.

It was a little bit easier for me to get the cash back because I was using my gift card, and so there was no need for them to charge back a credit on my credit card.  They just handed me the 40 cents and I was on my way.

When I was trying to get the 10% stimulus deal on my gift card purchase, I held up the line a little more, though, because it seemed like what the cashiers were telling me was in direct contradiction to what was posted on their cash register.  At times, also, I felt as if they were making up the policy as they went along, and it was only after corporate informed them of the proper procedure that they helped me out.

But this was for $60.00, not $0.40.  A little more money on the line.

It doesn’t matter how much is at stake, though: If I choose to argue with the cashier about it, anyone behind me gets out of the store later than if I had just kept quiet.  And I think it’s that way by design: Peer pressure from the customers behind you encourages you to keep things moving.  The question then becomes: "Is the amount of money I’m arguing about worth inconveniencing the people behind me?"

What I found out was that $60.00 was worth arguing about, but $0.40 wasn’t worth it.  (At least it wasn’t worth making everyone else wait.)

That’s a pretty big range.  How much would you fight for in the checkout line?

Posted in Shopping | 6 Comments »

Carnival of Debt Reduction #151

Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction! 

Since this is Carnival #151 here’s a debt reduction example based on a credit card payment of $151.

Let’s say you owe $6,040 on a card with 18% APR.  The minimum payment is calculated as 2.5% of the balance, or $10, whichever is greater.  This makes your payment — surprise! — $151.

If you make only the minimum payment, a payment schedule calculator will tell you that it will take 332 months and $8,675.29 in interest to be rid of that debt — more than what was owed to begin with.  If instead you continue making $151 payments until the debt is paid off, you’ll pay it off instead in only 62 months and pay $3,253.28 in interest.

The lesson: You’ll pay a heck of a lot more interest, for a lot longer, if you make only the minimum payment.

Here are the submissions.  Four I liked especially are at the top.  And just because you’re near the bottom doesn’t mean that I disliked your post!

• Think Your Way to Wealth lists thirty-five places that you can find the extra cash to kick off your debt snowball.  This list is a good way to ease into saving money and spending less.
• No Credit Needed gives five free and inexpensive ways to reduce your debt.  (Calling your creditors for a lower rate might give the biggest return on investment of all!)
• Credit Withdrawal talks about getting over the low-motivation times in debt reduction, especially when all of the little dragons are gone and only the big ones remain.  (Keep up the good work!)
• Debt Prison is saving some money by getting a bit more mileage out of his clothes dryer.  Some repairs aren’t all that hard and if you don’t mind them a little ugly (I really don’t) then they can be cheap, too.  (Bonus points for that door latch!)  He also submitted an article on collection agencies.
• Art of the Coupon explains how debt can breed more debt.  (A very good reason to get rid of consumer debt as quickly as possible!)
• If you’re in debt, the last thing you need is identity theft.  Free Money Finance interviews Equifax Personal Solutions about various aspects of identity fraud, and how to prevent it.
• Wise Bread shows how to cut expenses on hair care.
• No Debt Plan discusses cash back rewards from credit card purchases and how to use them wisely.  I’m also of the opinion that credit cards aren’t evil by themselves but not everyone thinks this way, and that’s all right.  If credit cards tempt you too much, then don’t use them; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either!
• My Two Dollars proclaims that paying off debt and saving money can be done at the same time.  This is wise if you need to build up an emergency fund.  That way the random brake job on your car or the emergency room visit won’t cause you incur more debt, or at least not as much.
• It’s easy to be down in the dumps about what you had — especially if it was no debt — but Budgets Are Sexy reminds us to be glad for what we have.
• Taking Charge shares that Wells Fargo might be offending some of its at-risk customers by reminding them that they’re there to help.  (If people are offended by being asked to own up to their debts, that’s just too darn bad.)
• How about downsizing to reduce your debt?  Digerati Life believes that this can be freeing, among other things.
• American Consumer News gives five quick tips to trim your energy costs and find a little extra change to knock that debt down.
• Discover Debt Freedom discusses how your credit report can affect your finances.
• A small paycheck makes it difficult to stay out of debt but the Money Answer Guy shows how to live on $600 per month.
• Starting an online store can be a good way to earn the extra money needed to pay off debt, and Gather Little By Little shows how.
• Personal Finance Analyst discusses deferment of student loans.

Have a great week!

Posted in Debt Reduction | 10 Comments »