Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for October, 2006

So I went to Best Buy to purchase my Christmas Present Early (because it can in turn create Christmas presents, so I can rationalize the purchase in my head). Talking to the young salesman it seemed pretty obvious he knew as much about PVR-like hard disk tv recorders as I did, maybe less (maybe a little more, I didn’t know). He also seemed a little too “aren’t I clever” for my liking, but I figured, what the heck, but then he made the classic customer service blunder.

Never try to be show how much smarter your are in comparison to your customer (even if you are positive you are). This young chap (no more than 22, most likely closer to 20), asks me whether I know what the three letter acronym (funny he didn’t say TLA), RAM stands for. I looked at him quizzically, and figured he was just joking, so I ignored him and asked about another feature of the system I was looking at, but he asked again, “Do you KNOW what RAM stands for?”, (RAM in this instance was actually DVD-RAM, which is a DVD format that never really took off, but RAM means as it did when I started working on computers say 28 years ago, Random Access Memory) with a real snarky tone. At that very moment I decided that this young chap was trying to “show me up” in front of my wife and daughter. So I replied my answer, and then lectured him for 5 minutes about why the entire concept of DVD-RAM never caught on. After the first 3 minutes I could tell he really didn’t care any more, but I figured that since he’d wasted my time, I’d return the favor and wouldn’t disengage from the conversation. Finally after proving to the young chaps satisfaction that I knew what RAM meant, he slunk away to “help” another couple.

If you are in the Customer Service world, or work on commission (which I think the folks at Best Buys in Canada don’t, but you never know), don’t ever try to prove how smart you are, or worse still how “clever” you are and how DUMB your customer is, you never really know who(m) you are talking to, now do you?

–C8j

I went out last night to buy my daughters their bus passes for November, and I figured I’d pick up a box of cookies that Ross Independent claimed was on sale and at the end of it, I had to fork out $176!!! Holy crap that is an expensive box of cookies, what were they made out of gold?

No wait, let me just check the bill here again, oh wait a minute, each of the bus passes is $58.25, so if I buy three of them, that costs me $174.75, ah now I understand. Hold on, if I have to do this for the next 6 months (at least), this is going to cost me $1048.50 ? I’m confused: my kids are going to public schools, where allegedly their education is supposed to be free (ok, let’s say “affordable” for a better argument, since NOTHING in this world is actually free). Now I am out of pocket over $1200.00 to pay to get my kids to school for a school year? This seems to me, a ridiculous savings, for someone, and a huge GRAB for someone else.

I have pointed out this point to my school trustees previously (not the comment about ludicrously expensive cookies, but the fact that I am out of pocket a big whack of change just to get my kids to school). Their response usually starts with a “oh that’s too bad”, but once I press the issue, I am given the “party line” about the expenses the school board has and how they don’t get enough funding from whatever level of government that are supposed to be funding them. I get sympathy, a little empathy and bupkis in terms of satisfaction or help.

The only help I get this year, is that at least these bus passes qualify for the Federal Conservative Mass Transit rebate, but, why is it that the Separate Board of Ottawa Carleton can afford to bus ALL of their kids, yet as soon as my kids hit Grade 7, I am the one responsible for this?

What do I want? I think either help with the cost of the bus passes, or some consideration for parents that are forced to do this. I will be passing this rant on to my School Board trustees (who are coincidently being elected in a week), and my provincial member of Parliament as well.

Not a bad rant for a Monday, I think. My apologies to Ross’ Independent, who’s cookies are not as expensive as I first thought. –C8j

So the article here which describes the alleged “shady tricks” pulled by a minority of lottery ticket vendors, is yet another reason NOT to buy lottery tickets. I have ranted about this before, but I guess I need to rant again.

The people who make money on lottery tickets are the following:

1. The people who OWN the lottery, notice you aren’t allowed to start your own lottery, that is reserved for governments. Too bad the “Send Big Caj to the Bahamas Lottery” sounds pretty good.
2. People who sell the lottery tickets. They make money on the sale, and when folks who they sell to win, as well.
3. People who buy the tickets

But (1) and (2) make the Lion’s portion of the money, the amount paid out by the lottery is insignificant in comparison (hence why you are not allowed to run one).

Put your lottery money in a savings account, or a retirement fund, or your debt, or your children’s college fund, or give it to a worthy charity, all of these are much better choices for your hard earned dollars. –C8j

I’ll take a financial angle on this, since I feel our society is a little too forgiving of the lunatics who freak out because their half caf, low fat, soy latte doesn’t have enough foam, but when is it within your rights to become rude and “lose it” when doing your finances?

I must put up a prolog that I have found in my life, that the people I have been the most rude to, usually have either come back to “haunt” me, or have become my best friends (and again, I don’t think I want to sound like I am condoning being rude for the sake of it, more along the lines of when do you need to be more assertive with people who are being rude to you).

Here are a few situations that I think you should be more assertive (maybe not “lose it”, but certainly stand up for yourself):

1. When your bank thinks they can charge you $13.95 a month in a “service plan” to have the priviledge of using their bank. Remember Don’t Be Afraid to Change, you should not be paying for banking, and you need to point out the number of banks out there that offer this service for free.
2. When you are owed money and someone is refusing to pay you your money. I am living that right now, when the dealership offered (after I complained to their parent company) to pay for my rental car, when my van broke down, and I have yet to see any money. Now I will call and be polite, but I will also not take NO for an answer either.
3. When someone is trying to take money from you they don’t deserve. There are so many people in this world like this, from telemarketers, scam artists, door to door beggars, and others. A polite but strong NO is needed.
4. When referees at basketball games don’t know how to call an offensive foul on an obvious charge! (no wait, that was for my basketball coaching blog, sorry).

So I guess I answered my own question with, don’t ever “lose it”, but, it is well within your prerogative to be assertive, strong willed, and even a little “short” with folks, but remember to be polite too. As you sow, so shall you reap folks.

I have taken to looking over my previous posts just to see if I agree with all of the stuff that I have ranted about over the past few years, and I tripped across the following post  Credit Card and Society, which I agree with completely, I just wish I’d follow my own advise!

Credit Card and Society

I remember when I was young, my parents had credit cards, but they rarely used them. I never really asked them why, but my guess would be it was because they viewed Credit Cards as something you used in an emergency or so that you didn’t have to carry large amounts of cash. My parents rarely bought things on impulse, so the Credit Card wasn’t a burden, it was a monthly payment and that was about it.

Fast forward to today, when I think I have in my possession over 10 different “credit cards” of varying types and sizes. I really only use 1 consistently, and that is because I like their rewards program, but I rarely ever have cash on me. I buy most things on the credit card and then pay it off (which makes for a very thick monthly statement, I admit), but my rationalization is that I would have spent the money any how, so getting the rewards from the credit card is an added plus.

However, since the credit card is part of my psyche (as it were) I am very guilty of “impulse buying” and not being careful enough with my spending. I longingly look in the Best Buy and Future Shop flyers at DVRs and big screen TV’s (like I deserve them), and I am sure somewhere along the way I will buy one of these, when maybe in my parents time, that type of luxury would have been not even thought about.

What brings on this philosophical bend for today’s article? Not sure really, but given that carrying cash seems to be passe, maybe it’s time to start doing that, because the amount of credit debt the typical consumer carries these days, what will happen when interest rates finally do take off? –C8j

I also have found that a lot of vultures are trying to vampire off my old postings to put comments that link to their web sites (to increase their ‘value’ to search sites like Google and such). Just comment about whether I am full of “poo poo” don’t advertise all right? Ask me, I might add you to my blogroll, don’t just leech off me, will ya?