SteveWords

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Watch out for fake trackbacks…

I have noticed an interesting thing happening on this blog. Apparently the spammers have discovered me. On my entry about the bad sound at the Chicago concert at Timmy’s Toy, there was 41 fake trackbacks that pertained to drug spam. I have erased them and will continue to wipe out things of this type on my blog as I do not support spammers. (added 9/5/07) I have changed the prefs for this blog to make it harder to spam it. You will have to enter a set of letters and numbers to comment and i will be checking comments first. Don’t worry-I won’t delete your genuine comment-just the spam ones!

As a side note-I haven’t been by Timmy’s Toy since the Chicago incident. Has anyone got any comments on their experience with the sound at concerts there? Leace a comment below!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Qworst wants to save you money!

I got yet another letter in the mail yesterday from Qworst (Otherwise known as Qwest-your not so friendly local communications monoply). The letter was offering me special savings if I signed up for a yearly agreement with them. I called the number and a clueless girl answered the phone who was trying to get me to switch to Qwest with MSN (YUCK!!!). I now use a local service that I like very much, thank you.

The even more interesting part of this whole thing is the scam behind the deal. Qworst sells a 1.5mb DSL connection for $28.00 a month at the regular price.  They wanted to sell me a 2 year agreement for only $22.00 a month-a savings of $6.00 a month. Here is the deal:

Save $6.00 a month = $72.00 a year or $144.00 for two years.

Here’s where it gets sticky! If you should decide to disconnect early interesting things happen! There is a fee of $200.00 for an early disconnect. So you could conceivably pay $200.00 to save $144.00. Sound like a good deal to you? Not to me! It’s just a marketing scam to trick you into locking yourself into their service! Either way they get to rip you off!

Some things to think about:

1. What will the technology be in two years? Most likely faster and cheaper. You lose!

2. Will the costs go down in two years and leave you holding the (expensive) bag? Most likely! You lose again!

3. Will getting the special rate actually save you money? This sometimes happens as the special rate requires “bundling” of services, some of which you will never use, but have to pay for to get the special rate. You lose again!

4. What happens if something happens? You lose your job and can’t pay the bill and have to turn off the phone. Congratulations! You owe Qworst an extra $200.00 (do not pass go!) and get nothing for it. ...and again!

Kinda makes you not want to do it doesn’t it?

Leave a comment or two!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

An Interesting Scam by the State of AZ!

The State Of Arizona is making millions off you and you probably don’t even realize it! This scam is a rather interesting one. Just buy an item using a manufacturer’s money off coupon. Here’s how it goes: Say you bought a mattress set that was originally $500.00. You have a coupon for $50.00 off. What do you have to pay tax on? The tax on the $450.00 that you actually paid for the item, or the original price of $500.00?  You guessed the tax on $450.00 didn’t you? WRONG!!! You have to pay the tax on the full $500.00 price! You end paying tax for something that you didn’t pay for. Yes! You get the honor of paying the tax on the $50.00 that you saved with the coupon! Kinda rips doesn’t it?

The interesting part that this is all perfectly legal because of this ADOR rule:

R15-5-129. Discounts, Refunds, and Coupon Redemption

C. When coupons issued by a manufacturer are redeemed by a retailer the amounts refunded to the purchaser are not permissible as deductions from the selling price of articles sold by the retailer. In these cases, the gross selling price is taxable.

It took me a while to find this out as I originally thought that the store was ripping me off. It even took me three calls to the Department of Revenue to find someone who actually knew about this!

This is just the type of thing that needs to be changed. Our government looks very greedy when they do this type of thing. Any Idea how we can fix the problem??? I would love to hear your comments on this!

Monday, August 21, 2006

An interesting scam from way back!

This is not the latest scam, but it deserves mention anyway.

Quite a while back my daughter Amanda got caught stealing a pacifier from Fry’s food store in Prescott. The pacifier was worth a little over $2.00. They of course made a big stink over this trying to get me to sign documents that implicated me in her crime. I loudly refused to do this. They also made me pay for the pacifier, which they kept using “evidence” as an excuse. The most interesting part was they also tried to collect a “fine” of $100.00 which I refused to pay, because they had no legal right to collect fines. The only thing that saved me was my strength of will to thwart their intents. I think most people would cave under this type of pressure. I bet that Fry’s made thousands from this scam!

This was over 10 years ago. Are they still trying to pull this type of stunt? Leave me comments and your experiances on this!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Always read the fine print!

Living today is always rather interesting. There seems to be a scam around every corner. Remember when marketing was an honest affair such as buy one get one free? No longer! Every time you see an offer you must really check it out to make sure the deal is really a deal. In this section I will write about “deals” that I find and tell you where the con is. Feel free to comment on any of these!