Tag: internet

  • Ways to thrill a first time customer – Not

    I placed a first time order with a company (a fairly high end company at that) for a total of 26 items. Today it arrived. The ‘quantity shipped’ on my packing slip shows all of the items listed and marked as shipped, nothing is marked on back order.

    How many items are missing?

    7

    That is a lot. That happens to be more than a quarter of them. How much did that bother me? So much that I called. I actually called. I hate to call. I don’t want to talk to somebody on the phone. I would much rather handle such things by email, but I wanted rapid assurances that this was going to be fixed, as well as an explaination of how such an error could be made.

    Their customer service number is only available until 5:30 PM Eastern time. I was unable to reach them. I’ve sent an email. Let’s see if how rapidly they respond.

  • Useful Things

    MSN displays local gas prices. They are not the only site that does it, but I do find the ones that get updates from the gas stations to be more reliable than the user reported sites. Unfortunately they do not cover the membership gas stations (like Costco, at least not in my area). I still find them very useful.

    When it comes to shopping, I prefer to shop online. When you go to shop at a store, there are people there. I don’t like that. There are people online too, but they interfere with my shopping somewhat less. I am also cheap. Therefore I like things which make it easier to get what I want for less. Froogle is some help there.

    I use fatwallet to look for deals and coupons and to get rebates.

    I also shop at bookcloseouts. It is like browsing through the bargain tables in a bookstore, but with a much better search feature.

    DVDpricesearch was a big favorite because the shopping cart features allow me to figure out the best place overall to get things, and also keep track of things I want to purchase when they finally get cheap enough. I don’t use them as much anymore because I was able to get a bit of a handle on my DVD purchasing addicition by using Netflix. They let me take coupons into account too. gamepricezone by the same guy is also useful, but now we almost always just “keep it” from gamefly, which tends to be cheaper. Gamefly is terrific, it lets us play a lot more games while spending a lot less on games that turn out to not be enjoyable to us.

    Of course ebay is good for locating deals or unusual things online. I like using jbidwatcher. Unfortunately due to some assholes he might quite working on the project. I’ve donated to him in the past.

  • I’ve been informed that the Hot New Thing

    is twitter. I am skeptical that I will get much use out of it, but I mention it because I know a bunch of you despise losing your preferred userid to the unwashed hordes just because you didn’t know about something early enough. I signed up. The site has been very slow today, no surprise as reports from some conferences are that it is a big topic of conversation. At least it can be set to friends only, so it isn’t just a tool to grow your social network.

  • 2hyp0cr1t1cal4m3

    There is a website called 2smrt4u. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children joined together to fund a site to help teach safe and smart internet usage to teens.

    They have some reasonable tips, such as:

    DON’T
    • Post your cell phone number, address, or the name of your school
    • Post your friends’ names, ages, phone numbers, school names, or addresses
    • Add people as friends to your site unless you know them in person
    • Communicate with people you don’t know
    • Give out your password to anyone other than your parent or guardian
    • Meet in person with anyone you first “met” on a social networking site
    • Respond to harassing or rude comments posted on your profile
    • Make or post plans and activities on your site
    • Post photos with school names, locations, license plates, or signs
    • Post photos with the name of your sports team
    • Post sexually provocative photos
    • Respond to threatening or negative emails or IMs

    Not that I agree 100% with all of them, but it gives a better starting point than some kids have been given before.

    However…

    They also offer an IM ICON  , you know, so you can present yourself as a challenge and dare stalkers to try to find you.

    Best of all they are giving away a free ring. Really. It is free. All they want you to do is tell them your date of birth, your address and whether you are male or female. Don’t worry, they won’t ask for your address if you say you are under the age of 13.

    So obviously, it is teaching excellent online habits.