Money Troubles Archives
January 1, 2010
Your Money Where My Big Fat Mouth Is
Well, the New Year is upon us, and I’ve decided to finally go ahead with two things I’ve wanted to do for awhile now: a donations page and a script coverage service.
See, the thing is, I’m poor. I have two mostly dead-end jobs, and I paid way too much to go to college. You might think I’m irresponsible, and you’re right. But in my defense, I didn’t take on more student loans to go to law school. (Okay, arguably, that’s a bad decision, because there may be a bigger payday at the end of that road, but who knows? All I’m hearing from that community is that attorneys keep taking bottom-rung administrative jobs because there are too many of them. So I might as well stick with the bottom-rung administrative job I have and not take on more debt. Especially since I’m more interested in the education than practicing law.)
Huh, that turned into a rant. Anyway, I’ve received more e-mails than you’d expect (that’s right, more than zero) from people requesting to “give back,” because apparently I’ve helped them with my half-cocked rants and acerbic wit. I never really thought that was necessary, but then I realized I both like and need money. So if you want to donate, I’ve set it up so you can…
If you don’t like getting nothing for something, I’m also offering some of my writing for sale. It’s all explained here.
As for the coverage service… Well, I’ve received many more requests from people wanting me to read scripts than wanting to hand me money. Honestly, I love reading scripts, and I love helping people (or trying to), but it’s gotten to the point where I just can’t keep doing it for free. So, if you like my reviews or my musings on craft and you’d like me to look at one of your scripts, check out the new coverage service.
Posted by Stan on January 1, 2010 1:42 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)
January 7, 2009
Bait and Shit
Fuck T-Mobile, man. Fuck them!
Here’s the skinny: I have a wireless router, and it’s a piece of shit. I’m also both cheap and poor, which works out, so I’ve mainly been bitching as much as humanly possible about what a flaming dog-pile off hairy shit this cocksucking router is. I periodically scan sales for good router prices, but nothing has hit my sweet $20 price range. There are some routers that periodically pop up on Frys’ for $15, but I always seem to miss them before they sell out.
Not too long ago, a friend alerted me to a deal T-Mobile was having — an upgraded version of the router I already have, with more RAM and an ability to support the third-party firmware that will supposedly rescue my router from its extreme suckitude, for $20, with additional money off if you use Microsoft’s retarded Live CashBack thing. That might not be what it’s called. I just abuse it for savings. I don’t commit it to memory.
It seemed like a fine deal, people on nerd forums suggested all was on the up and up, so I rolled with it. When I placed my order, it warned me the router would be backordered until after Christmas. I wasn’t ordering it for a holiday gift, so I didn’t care. I proceeded through, got a confirmation that, again, warned me of its “backorder” status. Again, I didn’t care.
Four days later, I received the following e-mail from T-Mobile:
Dear T-Mobile Customer,Thank you for ordering the T-Mobile @Home® Linksys router. Due to high demand, this router is currently out of stock.
We will be upgrading your order and shipping you the T-Mobile @Home® HiPort™ router instead. You should receive your order on or before Tuesday, December 23. We’ll send you an e-mail once your order has shipped, so you’ll know it’s on its way.
We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.
Sincerely,
T-Mobile Customer Care
The… Fuck?
I didn’t order this piece of shit to get it on or before Tuesday, December 23. It warned me twice of its backordered “will not arrive by Christmas” status, and I placed the order anyway.
I also didn’t order the router because I wanted any old piece-of-shit router. I want the specific piece-of-shit router I ordered. The goddamn T-Mobile @Home® HiPort™ router doesn’t even support the third-party firmware I so desperately desire.
I just have to ask: why? I’ve done a lot of online ordering and my day, even reaching back to the hoary days of mail-order, and I can’t recall a single instance of being “upgraded” against my will. I’ve had phone support people attempt to upsell me, but they’ve never done anything insane like, “Say, I know you said you want the cheap old Boss orange distortion pedal, but I’m going to go ahead and put you down for the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzzface pedal instead. It’s only $120 more, but you can get those good Hendrix and Billy Corgan* sounds.”
You might think this is an exaggeration. “They just upgraded you,” you’re saying. “It’s not like they illegally charged you more for something you didn’t order and didn’t want.” Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?
The total cost of the router, after all my scheming, was around $18. That’s what they charged my credit card on December 13th. On December 17th, the date of this e-mail, I got an additional charge of $35 and change, which approximates the “upgraded” router’s usual $50 pricetag plus tax or maybe shipping. I have no idea since they never sent me a goddamn invoice, those jackal prick motherfuckers. Even when I got the fucking box with the router in it, the packing slip invoice didn’t include a total price. What kind of operation is this?
“What’s that?” you ask cautiously. “The box arrived. You didn’t call their customer service and cancel?”
Fair question, reader. I’ll tell you why: because the “upgrade” e-mail included an inexplicable (and unnecessary) image attachment, my mail program filed it as junk. I didn’t notice it in the junk folder until more than a day later, and it literally shipped while I was on hold waiting to talk to one of their douchenozzle, ass-faced CSRs. I figured there was no goddamn point in wasting my time. They couldn’t cancel it now that it’s shipped, and I’d end up having to call them again to get return authorization on the package.
It’s a moot point, anyway. While I waited on hold, I browsed those same mystical forums that alerted my friend to the sale. Everyone had been similarly baited and switched, and after waiting for hours on hold, the CSRs — and their supervisors — told every caller that, because of the holidays, they couldn’t possibly cancel an order! It’d ruin everything, especially their quarterly profit figures! As for the additional charge, the CSRs came up with the laughably convoluted explanation that they have to charge something in order to process the upgrade and ship the order. No explanation on why they couldn’t charge $0.00 or $0.01 instead of the exact balance of a non-sale router and shipping/tax — they just promised that the extra charge would be removed…someday.
None of this — except the additional charge — would bother me if they had asked. An e-mail saying, “Hey dude, we know the holidays are coming up, so we can upgrade you to X router for $Y if you want. Give us a call or respond to this e-mail and we’ll hook you up.” A phone call with similar patter would work, as well. I wouldn’t even mind a hard-sell approach. I’d say, “Blow me,” and hang up, but the point is to give me the option. I ordered what I ordered for several reasons, none of which include “Christmas.” It’s a steaming bowl of bullshit to just assume I need it for the holidays and switch the order up without asking, and then charge more for it, and then refuse to cancel the order. I don’t know the laws on this, but it feels illegal.
I considered trying to haggle with customer service to get the router I actually wanted, but after the business practices they’ve exhibited, I don’t want to do anything but kick every single shithead employed by T-Mobile in the nuts. And I know they employ a bunch of women, so I want them each to undergo the long, brutal process of gender-reassignment surgery, on T-Mobile’s dime. Then I want somebody to create some kind of sensory receptor that will approximate the feeling of getting kicked in the nuts (because I hope and assume their man-molded junk doesn’t have the exact physical properties that will give the same feel of beating on the spermatic plexus with a heavy wooden spoon).
I know nobody reads this blog, but maybe some T-Mobile employee will try to get ahead by Googling “how to fuck over more T-Mobile customers” and stumble across this post. I welcome comments from any and all T-Mobile employees. Explain your company’s justification of this sort of business practice. Don’t forget to leave your mailing address so I can kick you in the nuts.
*Back in the olden days, getting a Billy Corgan sound was considered a selling point, not an embarrassment. [Back]
Posted by Stan on January 7, 2009 3:45 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)
August 12, 2006
Dough
To my surprise, last night The Manager actually sent the money he offered to cover that script. I figured losing out on that would be (deserved) punishment for talking shit, but he came through. I’m impressed.
Posted by Stan on August 12, 2006 9:59 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)
July 28, 2003
Screwed Again
I got screwed, guys. Screwed sideways, and not in a pleasant way.
See, I bid on this poster on eBay. I was very excited about it, being that nobody seemed particularly interested in it, so I’d get a nice deal on a signed poster by my favorite musician, Juliana Hatfield.
“Signed by the artist,” the listing says. Am I the only one who would take that to mean that it was signed by Juliana Hatfield? Apparently, because when I got it today, it was not signed by Juliana Hatfield — it was signed by Lynn Porterfield, the poster designer. In pencil, no less. What the shit? Who the hell wants “L. Porterfield” written in block letters (it’s not even really a signature!) underneath a poster of Juliana Hatfield?
I’m either really stupid, or the listing was vaguely worded so as to create the impression that it was signed by Juliana Hatfield, so salivating, sex-starved bidders (i.e., me) would run up enormous credit card bills to pay for a seemingly valuable poster that really has no value, unless you happen to be a big fan of people who know how to use Adobe programs.
In summary, I’m frustrated. I’m not sure if I’m irritated with my own stupidity like I normally am, or if I’m just disappointed by the word choice of some eBay seller who wants more money.
The consolations: (1) I’ve been scouring eBay and shitty used record stores for several months, trying to find what little merchandise I can relating to my beloved (not Paige; Juliana); all I’ve found are two t-shirts and the occasional poster that simply has her name, in tiny letters below some headliner, on it. This is the first poster I’ve found that is actually, by gum, for Juliana herself, and I’d be proud to hang it on my wall as soon as I erase the signature (in this case, a pencil signature is a good thing). (2) The price was driven up less than $6 from its original asking price, so if li’l miss eBay thang was shakin’ her lawyer-speak booty trying to get an influx of bids, it really didn’t work out all that well.
Posted by Stan on July 28, 2003 1:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)
July 13, 2003
Business Scheme
I recently came up with what I believe is an ingenious idea. Often, I’m wrong about such things, but this time, I think I done good. See, recently I dropped $1000 to fix my car’s air-conditioning system. It’s a lot of money, and as I hemorrhage money like a gunshot victim leaks blood, I think about this a lot. Was it really worth that excessive amount of money just so I can be somewhat cooler while driving? I don’t even like driving, and I don’t like owning a car, so what was the point?
Ever since it was fixed, it’s been causing the car to run rough (this isn’t unusual), and it’s also started this random clicking noise (this is unusual), so I either drive with the click or I go and get it repaired. Either way, I’ll inevitably be raped by either the cosmos (in the sense that my car will break down or explode at the most inopportune time the goddess Fortuna can think of) or a large, greasy mechanic named Vito (not gay).
Meanwhile, I’ve had a battery of medical appointments for a variety of reasons I don’t feel it necessary to dive into at this point (short version: I am fat and can’t see; the two might be related). I’m insured through my dad’s work, because I didn’t make it at Starbucks long enough to swindle a free year of health insurance.
Yet another meanwhile: my dad, like most Americans approaching middle-age, hates his job, his life, his kids (i.e., me; he has no beef with the one who moved 2000 miles away), and so forth. He’s in a rut, and he wants to make one last score. No, he’s not a coke addict or a jewel thief (that I know of); really, he just wants to start some sort of business so he could work from home and actually enjoy the declining years of his life. The problem is, he can’t think of any business anybody would be interested in.
And then it hit me: auto insurance that works like a PPO.
No, hear me out, this actually does make sense. For those who aren’t in the know, a health insurance PPO basically has a big, fat book full of medical professionals in your general area. If you choose a doctor on this list, you only have to pay a minimal, per-visit co-pay and the insurance covers the rest. For most people, this works just a tad better than paying the entire cost out of pocket.
Wouldn’t it make sense, what with so many people complaining about anal bleeding shortly after paying off the guy at the local auto shop, to work a similar scheme with auto insurance? I’m not sure if any companies do anything like this — as far as I know, they don’t — so most car owners, since they are in most cases required to have auto insurance, are basically dumping money into a system they never really use.
Sure, it’s nice to know it’s there if you need it, but why pay $1200 a year (that’s what I pay, and boy am I happy about it!) for theoretical coverage? I mean, if you do get into an accident at some point, your insurance premium inevitably goes up anyway. The whole idea that you’re paying money into a system that will eventually be used to cover the costs of future accidents is pretty much a load of horseshit. Why should people pay that?
Answer: they shouldn’t. But insurance is still required by law, wouldn’t it be nice to offer consumers an insurance program that is actually useful? Like, for example, a company that, in exchange for your horrifically high annual payment, gives you a list of mechanics in the area. From there, if you need any repairs or, say, an oil change, or something like that, it’s mostly covered on your insurance, with a sliding — but still minimal — co-pay that is based on the amount of the services rendered.
Of course, if you still had an accident, the insurance would still cover it, the premiums would still go up, but at least, in the interim, you’re actually getting something for your money.
Maybe it’s crazy. I’m most likely talking out my ass, because I don’t know anything about the insurance business, and the only thing I know about cars is that rearview mirrors are pretty easy to adhere onto a windshield and that ABS brakes cause funny smells to shoot out of the air vents. Still, it seems like a good, sound, logical idea to me. If I were into business investing, I’d back somebody who had this idea.
Of course, this is probably exactly why I’m going to an art school.
Posted by Stan on July 13, 2003 8:31 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)
April 3, 2003
Amazon Associate
I like money. Money is cool. I have links now on the side of my page, and if you click on the link and then buy whatever it is I am currently hippin’ my grove-thang to, I get money. So buy stuff.
I’d like to update it every time I update my blog, but I’m really lazy, so I’ll probably do it once a week or so.
In summary: buy stuff.
Posted by Stan on April 3, 2003 4:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)
March 22, 2003
Progress of My Columbia House Ruination Project
Allow me to brag for a little while.
Thanks to my elaborate Columbia House scamming, I am now the proud owner of the following DVDs:
The Blues Brothers (Collector’s edition)
Bowfinger
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Collector’s edition)
October Sky
The Royal Tenenbaums
Save the Last Dance (shut the fuck up, I liked this movie, you fucking bastards)
Wonder Boys
Bullets Over Broadway
Deconstructing Harry
Manhattan Murdery Mystery
Dr. Strangelove
Best in Show
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Gone With the Wind
Frailty
The Goonies
Pulp Fiction (Collector’s edition)
All the President’s Men
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Office Space
The Shining (1980 — though I admit to being one of the three people who liked the remake)
The Sting
Groundhog Day
Night of the Living Dead (30th Anniversary Edition)
Big Trouble
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Pink Floyd: The Wall
Total cost (deepdiscountdvd.com - includes 8.25% IL sales tax): $517.35
Average cost/DVD: $19.16
Total cost (Columbia House - includes 8.25% IL sales tax & shipping/processing charges): $832.28
Average cost/DVD: $30.83
Total cost to me (includes 8.25% IL sales tax): $192.06 ($29.05 of which has been paid)
Average cost/DVD: $7.11
I saved 63% off of deepdiscountdvd.com’s price and 77% off of Columbia House’s price.
A winner is me!
Posted by Stan on March 22, 2003 2:07 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)
December 26, 2002
Loan Me $50
I realized I don’t have any money. I barely have enough to scrape by through the next month, and I’ve already made some foolish purchases, so technically I’m in the hole some. Hopefully I can get a temp job for the bizarre four-week mid-January-to-mid-February break. If not, I’m screwed. I may have to — shudder — borrow money from my parents. Or — double shudder — get a real (well, semi-real…) job again.
If only I hadn’t been so royally screwed so consistently by Starbucks…I really did like working there. I actually miss it. It was the most fun I’ve ever had working, which probably has something to do with the fact that every day wasn’t the same. Sure, the recipes and chores never changed, but every day was a new and baffling adventure full of new customers and regulars alike.
I guess what I’m implying is that, rather than temping (teh horrar…), I’d like another job like that. Problem is, a job like that is difficult to get. Sure, I could get a job at any of the 93 Starbucks’ in the area. The problem is, they’d run my name and discover that I’ve already worked at Starbucks, and it ended badly. I might be able to get my foot in the door by explaining the situation with school and the bad hours and the crazy manager, but they probably wouldn’t buy it. And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t get the job.
I could go to a different area of the food-service industry, but the problem is that I’d argue that Starbucks is the least disgusting of them all. There was never really an excessive amount of disgusting stuff floating around Starbucks. Other than occasional spillage of frap mix (usually my fault), the job was pretty clean. And the preparation was surprisingly clean, as well.
I might be able to find a job at another local coffee shop. I’ve been told by others who work at non-Starbucks coffee shops that they’re all pretty much the same, at least where preparation and clean-up are concerned. But the hurdle I’d need to leap around is my prior job experience. I could lie and say I’ve never done this kind of work before, but that would hurt my chances of getting the job. Or I could tell the truth, admit my experience at Starbucks, but tell them that they can’t be used as a reference because I quit badly. This would probably hurt my chances more.
I dread temping again, and that’s assuming I even get a possible job to dread. Let’s just hope one of my auditions goes well in the next few months. Then, my pockets will be lined with gold pieces and crack pipes, and I’ll be able to climb my way out of my $47 worth of debt and maybe get an iBook.
…but that’s a long way off…
Posted by Stan on December 26, 2002 9:51 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)
November 24, 2002
Fiduciosity
I overspent. Not the first time, but certainly the most irritating. I fell victim to one of my late-night compulsions to scour eBay for a deal, coupled with a sudden burst of late-night excitement about the film I’ve been trying to make for about six months and will probably not end up making at all.
When I try to fall asleep, I usually just keep myself awake thinking about future prospects; usually when that happens, they’re so depressing and full of self-loathing that I end up exhausted, but this was one of the few night when I’ve actually worked myself into a tizzy about this film. And I was mulling over all sorts of logistical problems that would be created by my current lighting system, which right now is pretty asstastic (more on that later). What I decided I needed was something more portable — something like the lighting kits at school.
So, at around 2:30, I leaped out of bed after trying to fall asleep for the better part of two hours, flipped on my computer, and started searching eBay for a deal on a lighting kit similar to — if not exactly like — the lighting kits we have at school. Basically, cheap lights that are decent for my purposes. They’re actually somewhat of an “industry standard” for low-budget films. And then I found a perfect deal — a used kit almost identical to the D.P. kits at school (the only difference is this one had two key/fill lights and an exclusive fill light, as opposed to the three key/fills in the Columbia kits), for the low low buy-it-now price of roughly $750, which is basically half price for this kit.
That’s a deal. Last summer, before my sister convinced me to go the “cheaper” route, I scoured eBay for similar kits, but through ferocious bidding and excessive buy-it-now prices, the only “deals” I found would have cost me about as much as it would have to buy the kit new. I would have done that, knowing the value of this kit in comparison to other lighting attempts…but I didn’t have that kind of money at the time. Temp work had dried up (except for a whopping three-day assignment and a one-day sentence to hell, I didn’t temp the entire summer, and I’m currently employed by four different agencies in the area), and the job from Starbucks was in the distant future. So I was running low on cash, and I needed cheaper alternatives.
Enter the sister. With her bafflingly thorough knowledge of any and all lighting equipment and its usefulness in a variety of settings on the stage and screen, I was guided toward buying cheap but (theoretically) useful lighting equipment. Mostly, she said, because of the 3CCD chips in DV cams that don’t require buckets full of light to come out properly exposed, I could pretty much fudge decent lighting through DJ equipment. So I scoured eBay, as usual, looking for deals on par cans and accessories.
As it turned out, in order to get the par 64s to work properly, I needed to invest several buckets o’ money into them. The base units came as basically a shell of a light — no lamp fixture, no barn doors, not even a plug. Just the ground, hot, and neutral wires protruding from a black cable. I had to wire it myself, which I could do (but I hate it, so even now I haven’t gotten around to doing it), and the theory was to plug all of the lights into this doohickey from American DJ that carefully controlled the wattage distribution among each of the lights, so as to prevent blown fuses or tripped circuits. As it turned out, though, without some sort of mini-light board, that doohickey did not function.
So here’s what I ended up with: four light fixtures (with gel frames), three lamps, three standard stands, one backlight stand, three light switches (in metal boxes), and three extension cords. The thing that needs to be understood about the light stands — despite the claim that they were designed for par 64s, they are not. So I had to rig them — complete with safety cables around the light fixtures, as they were likely to fall at the slightest movement — so that they’d stay somewhat properly on the stands.
It’s a terrible set up, and it’s not specifically mobile. Not that there are many exciting action shots in this film that require mobile lights, but there are enough that it’s a necessity. And it’s just generally a good idea, in the grand scheme of things, to shell out some money for decent lights instead of spending hours fighting with the lights you have…I mean, whether it seems like it or not, I do want to get this film shot sometime before the end of the decade. So I, in a somewhat incoherent stupor that I would regret come morning, immediately leaped on the $750 buy-it-now so I could own a decent light kit and put the horror of the par 64s behind me.
It was only after that that I realized I don’t have any money. I’ve been burning money this semester like it’s going out of style. Part of it was grief, in a way. “Gee, your girlfriend broke up with you and you’ve got half a dozen birthday checks streaming in via the USPS? Why don’t you buy a Playstation and some games?” I bought a ridiculous amount of stuff I don’t need this month. My AmEx bill was ridiculous — ~$650. The only thing in the list of charges that I actually flat-out needed were my textbooks. But considering the way this semester’s going, I’d debate the necessity of said textbooks. Hell, I didn’t even buy textbooks for two classes (and, fuck, it still cost me almost $200 in total), and those are the only two that I’m getting an A in right now.
But I got obsessive. I’d like to say it’s just the horrible aftermath of the relationship, but reviewing the charges, most of them occurred before that happened. I did splurge quite a bit after that happened — the Playstation 2 and games, as I mentioned, but also five script books from the greatest show in the history of humanity (i.e., Buffy), and all of the Juliana/Blake Babies CDs I didn’t have.
It’s not like I don’t have the money — I actually do — I just needed to not spend the $750 on a lighting kit right now. I should have saved it for next semester, because as of now, I’ve depleted all but $400 of savings. And while $400 will more than take me through the end of the semester if I just stop burning money, I’ve also got a car insurance premium to cover in December, and I have no idea if Christmas money will cover that. And there’s my cell phone bill (thank God I’m now using only about 30 of my 250 monthly minutes; at least I won’t have to worry about additional charges). And I owe my sister money for my parents’ Christmas gifts. And I need to get her a gift. And I really want to buy Bob Woodward’s new book, because everything he writes is gold. But there I go again, slipping into what I want to have as opposed to what I need.
I’ve got about two dozen textbooks to sell. Mostly, I’ve been too fucking lazy to sell them when they have their buy-back thing at the bookstore, but now I need the money, so I’m gonna dump them all off. I checked all of them but two, and they’re (fortunately) still the most current editions in print. That should bring me about $30. I’m also going to sell all of my current lighting rig on eBay. Usually that stuff sells like hotcakes, so I might be able to at least recoup the amount I wasted on it.
And then a friend of mine invited me to NYC in December. I’ve only been to New York once, but I was too young to remember it well. All I remember is that the Statue of Liberty is far less interesting from the inside. A week and a half ago, I could have gone with a clear conscience. As expensive as New York is, a weekend trip (…I think it was only supposed to be a weekend trip…) would have been at least slightly cheaper than this lighting kit. I’d hope so, anyway, but I’m going by Chicago prices. Just so long as we got our hotel in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and took a bus into Manhattan, we would’ve been fine.
Posted by Stan on November 24, 2002 6:35 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)
