why god hates me

Inquiring readers named Kurt want to know: If a buyer from Canada buys something from someone in America on eBay, pays for it, including shipping, and then it shows up with a $50 C.O.D. charge for imports and customs, is that kosher? Discuss..

Here are six special photos that readers added to The Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, chosen because they’re both neat and could possibly be used in a Consumerist post. Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers go and upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right, and start hitting “send to group” on your individual photos you want to add to the pool.

By: Danno @ The Photo Collective

Title: dolla
By: donbuciak

Title: Cold Winter’s Mourning
By: jayRaz

Title: What I Think Of Bank Of America
By: defeatism

Title: Chevron Tanker
By: So Cal Metro

By: bradym80

Add your shots to The Consumerist Flickr pool, and perhaps they’ll get featured in a future story, or even highlighted in a Friday Consumerist Flickr Pool Finds post. See previous winners of the Friday Consumerist Flickr Pool finds here.

It’s not just supermarkets that are shrinking—you can also build yourself a 90-square-foot house to shack up in with your hunched-over spouse and children. You’ll save money! You’ll save the environment! Relatives will never expect to be given free room and board when they come to visit!

Tara Flannery, a 25-year-old college student in Seattle, plans to move within the next few months from the Craftsman-style two-story house she shares with roommates into a Tumbleweed house. The decision was largely financial.

“I wanted to buy my own place by 30, and the way the housing market is going that’s not going to happen,” she said, referring to the tightening credit market and the fact that home prices remain high in Seattle, despite the mortgage crisis.

In a way, Ms. Flannery’s tiny house, which will be about 100 square feet with a sleeping loft and will cost roughly $40,000, is a modern twist on the starter homes of the 1950s suburbs; it offers her a way into home ownership, of a sort, without the debilitating costs. “I can spend my money traveling instead,” she said.

Of course, if you live somewhere like New York City or Tokyo then you know this “movement” was already well established decades before, only with apartments, and it does nothing for your finances. We can see it working out as a more cost-efficient, back-to-basics approach elsewhere, though.

Or if you’re really serious about saving money, you can always build a dirt house underground.

“The Next Little Thing? “ [New York Times]

RELATED
www.smallhousestyle.com
www.tumbleweedhouses.com
(Photo: Adulau)

The New York Times reports that several supermarket and retail chains, including Safeway, Walmart, and Whole Foods, are beginning to experiment with much smaller store sizes that emphasize things like cafes, prepared meals, and produce. The idea is to emphasize speed over choice, and was apparently triggered by UK competitor Tesco, which has launched over 70 small-format supermarkets in Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California over the past year. Of course, the stores also require less shelf space for products than they did a year ago.

“The average person goes shopping for 22 minutes,” said Phil Lempert, who edits Supermarketguru.com, a Web site that tracks retail trends. “You can’t see 30,000 or 40,000 products. We are moving into an era when people want less assortment.”

“Miles of Aisles for Milk? Not Here “ [New York Times]
(Photo: Getty)

We received an email from Guitar Center’s Chief Marketing Officer this afternoon letting us know that the $100 markup on their iPods was a pricing mistake, and that they’re automatically refunding the difference to anyone who bought at the wrong price as well as giving them $10 gift cards.

Here’s their email:

We fixed the error on iPod pricing on our website this morning. And anyone who bought at the wrong price is going to be refunded without asking, no matter how long ago they purchased. Plus we are sending them a $10 gift card so they can add some tunes to their new iPod.

Thanks to your reader for pointing out the mistake. Apple changed prices and discontinued some models with their latest upgrades, and our system—for a reason we have fixed—didn’t reflect that.

Inflated prices are not in our repertoire. Actually, getting gear in musicians’ hands at the lowest possible price is what we are all about. We appreciate the fair shake we got from The Consumerist. Keep up the good work. No problem will ever appear on your site that we do anything other than solve

To the fallen, the office workers, the families; to the firemen, the first responders, the workers; to the the hole in the ground, the empty space in the sky, to the the gray miasma—here’s a free bowl of soup. Thanks EconoLodge. I can’t tell whether that’s incredibly tacky or deeply poetic. Either way, it’s free soup.

(Photo: samwilkinson.org)

Want a crapload of coupons? Check out Ultimatecoupons.com. They’ve got tons. You can navigate by topic or retailer or manufacturer and see if there’s some discounts available. Some of them are printable and some are online-only. The site design is underwhelming, but functional. What else is there to say? It’s coupons, you know what to do with them.

UltimateCoupons [Official Site]

Rudder is a new personal finance service that differs from the dozens of other ones now available in two key ways: it presents a simplified overview of your available funds, which it calls “What’s Left,” and it delivers it (along with bill reminders and balance notifications) to your email inbox instead of requiring you to visit a website. Think of it as a highly customized “Very Short List” or “Daily Candy,” only the topic is always your current financial health.

The “What’s Left” approach might be too vague for those of you who want details, details, details when it comes to your money. Instead of presenting you a dashboard of data, Rudder uses what our editor Ben called a “no-thought-required cash flow management” approach. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, especially if you feel like you need to take control of your finances but don’t know where to start.

Click here to see a sample Rudder email.

As Cnet puts it:

Rudder’s name for this magic number is “what’s left” and it figures out what you’ve got for discretionary spending based on when you’re getting your next paycheck and what’s in your various savings and checking accounts, compared to credit card payments and other bills that need paying off. The entire process is shown to users, something Roy hopes will educate as much as it does take the work out of doing the math yourself.

As far as security, Rudder asks for read-only access to your accounts through CashEdge; Rudder itself doesn’t store any user names, passwords, or account numbers. It’s free as in ad-supported—you can see an example of the sort of ads they serve in the sample email above.

Rudder.com
“Rudder steers personal finance to your in-box” [Cnet]

This will come as a serious blow to a number of our commenters, but we have a bad story about a credit union. Gasp, shock, horror, it’s true. Opportunities Credit Union of Vermont, where reader Rick has his mortgage, told Rick that they wouldn’t be paying for his home inspection because they never got the bill. However, Rick’s inspector’s online billing system shows when people look at the bills he sends. It shows that Opportunities Credit Union accessed the bill. Whoopsies. Here’s Rick’s letter to the Credit Union president, asking them to pay the $125 for the home inspection:

Caryl Stewart
President
Opportunities Credit Union
92 North Avenue
Burlington, VT05401

Dear Ms. Stewart,

I am writing to make you aware of an incident regarding my mortgage with your organization [address redacted]. Let me first say that this is my first mortgage, and after falling in love with our new property, it seemed very unlikely that we would be able to get a mortgage at all - the mobile home in question had been rejected by several traditional mortgage agencies, and Opportunities Credit Union was there for us when we needed you. We’re very grateful for this, yet feel that we received poor service recently regarding a mandated home inspection.

Prior to applying for our mortgage, we had an excellent local inspector, Mr. Jim Breer of Better Home Inspections in Barre, conduct an inspection of the home. Based on this inspection and an appraisal, Erika Glidden sent a list of repairs to complete. After the repairs, the appraiser and inspector would return to verify the repairs. I’m sure this is all common practice, but as this is our first home, we asked Erika to explain it all in detail. One of the details discussed was payment for the post-repair appraisal and inspection. Erika was clear with us that these bills would be submitted to Opportunities, and that the credit union would pay them. I verified this again in mid-June, prior to scheduling the follow-up inspection with Mr. Breer. When I contacted Mr. Breer, I informed him that he should get a list of required repairs directly from Ms. Glidden, and that he should verify with her that Opportunities would be paying his fee. We were very clear about this, and he had no trouble getting the list for his inspection from OPPSVT.

On June 26, 2008, Jim Breer complete his inspection, and on June 27th, he submitted his report electronically to myself and to Natalie Aiuto at Opportunities, as instructed by Erika Glidden. The invoice for his services was attached to the report (as with the appraisal, which was paid without issue).

Mr. Breer’s electronic report system assigns a specific username and password to each recipient, and allows him to track access to his reports. He reports that Ms. Aiuto viewed the report on July 1st. On July 3rd, Ms. Glidden contacted me via email to report that she “still had not received” the inspection report, and that Mr. Breer “never sent… a copy…” At this point (also on 7/3/08), I provided Ms. Glidden with my user name and password to access the report - both copies included invoices. After finishing two small repairs, on 7/28/08, Ms. Glidden emailed to let me know that everything was “all set.”

Nearly a month later, on 8/19/08, Ms. Glidden forwarded me a copy of an email from Jim Breer, complaining that he had not yet been paid his $125 fee, and threatening a lien on the property. Included in the forwarded email was the following:

From: Natalie Aiuto
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:43 AM
To: ‘Erika Glidden’
Subject: FW: Past due balance

Erika, on 8/5 I sent you an e-mail that you replied to on 8/11, asking if the home inspector’s bill for $125 for Young was paid, and you replied that the file was “all set.”

Please see Jim Breer’s e-mail to Rick Young, cc’ing me…

Ms. Glidden explained to me that “escrow had been closed out,” and that the bill was now my responsibility. In this same 8/19/08 email, she explained that she “never received a bill,” and therefore bore no responsibility. The bill was attached to the report, which she had viewed.

When I was able to get the report tracking data from Mr. Breer, and provide it to Ms. Glidden, she protested that, “the only part of the report that was looked at was parts that pertained to repairs on the home.” There was no such confusion with the appraiser’s report, which I have a copy of and which is laid out very similarly - and even so, failure to notice a bill does not mean that it needn’t be paid. Further, in the body of the 8/19 email, it is made clear in the email between Ms. Aiuto and Ms. Glidden that Opportunities was aware of the fee, and acknowledged responsibility for payment prior to the release of escrow funds.

Ms. Stewart, I recognize that $125 isn’t a lot of money, but your organization made a commitment to me, and to Mr. Breer that you would compensate him for his services. The consequences of Ms. Glidden’s failure to follow through and the fact that she provided false information to Ms. Aiuto shouldn’t fall on your customer. To resolve this issue, I would appreciate it if Opportunities would pay Mr. Breer the $125 that he is owed. The ball was dropped here, and responsibility lies with OPPSVT. If needed, I will gladly provide copies of all emails and records that I have access to.

I look forward to your reply and a resolution to my problem, and will wait one week before seeking help from a consumer protection agency or the Better Business Bureau. Please contact me vie this email address, or at xxx-xxx-xxxx [redacted]

Sincerely,

Rick Y.
[address redacted]

Maybe they accessed it and just didn’t look at the right parts, but how is that Rick’s fault? The crux isn’t Ms. Glidden’s or Aiuto’s reading and comprehension skills, it’s whether they got the bill. By their own admission, they did….so what’s the problem?

(Photo: Getty)

Joseph writes:

I have a first generation Nintendo Wii and I recently bought the game Boom Blox for it. When I put the game in to start playing it would often lock up at the health warning screen and I would have to restart my Wii by unplugging it since no other method would work.

Here’s what happened when he contacted Nintendo for help.

I first expected it was a problem with the disc since Gamestop sold it to me as New when the case was opened already (another story for another time) but the disc was in perfect condition. I also noticed my other games were acting weird and my Wii channels would give errors that they couldn’t load properly even though they were. This prompted me to go online and see what I could do.

I work in tech support and moderate some support forums so I hate when people don’t look for answers before asking questions or calling for help so I went to the Nintendo forums to see what I could find. Unfortunately there really wasn’t any information about errors with this particular game or any Wii related defects that fit what I was experiencing. I was wary about getting email support but it seemed to be Nintendo’s preferred next step so I sent an email to them with everything I was experiencing.

I was surprised when a day later I got an email stating my problem would probably not be best handled using email correspondence and to call in. I called in and the person on the phone (I wish I could remember her name) was very nice and very helpful. She quickly looked up my account with Nintendo and immediately suggested I should send my Wii in for repair. She said it would probably waste my time troubleshooting the issue further since it wasn’t anything she’d seen and seemed beyond any fixes she could offer. She noted that I was a few months out of warranty but offered free shipping and free repair anyway without me even bringing it up. I immediately received a shipping label and sent the system in the next day.

I was bummed not having anything to play for what I’d expected to be a month long fix and was shocked to receive an email on the day they received the package stating they had received it and repaired it the same day. They also shipped it back out to me that day as well! So all in all it took one week from start to finish to submit a help request and have a fixed Wii returned to me. It has worked great ever since and I no longer have any problems with it. There are so many places where this could have been a bad experience but Nintendo really did a stellar job. They provided fast responses and did more than they needed to make sure I was a happy customer and will continue to purchase their products. Great job!

Nintendo, what the hell? We don’t know what you’re up to with this “good customer service” routine, but pulling shenanigans like this doesn’t keep our tipline stuffed with complaints. Please think about this the next time you offer to repair a broken Wii.