Category: Opinions

What I think about things

Can’t Fathom why Kindle versions would cost more than Physical

** Update June 27, 2010 **

Amusingly, the day after I posted this, the Amazon price for the physical book jumped up to $10.19 and has remained there ever since.

Not saying it’s related to *my* post, but amusing nonetheless. Just saying to anybody at Amazon who happens across this, the thrust of my post was that the Kindle price should come *down*, not the other way around…

** End Update June 27, 2010 **
I was hankering for a new book to read yesterday so I went to pick up Peter F. Hamilton’s “Fallen Dragon” from Amazon.com.  I see that the current price for the Kindle download is $9.99. But I can purchase a brand new physical copy of the book from Amazon for only $8.24. In fact fully 7 of the 22 retailers offering the book are doing so for less than the $9.99 kindle price.

Most of those are also charging shipping fees which will put them over the Kindle price. I use Amazon so much that I’m experimenting with their “Prime” service which means that I’ve already paid a flat fee for my shipping for the year so there is no additional cost to me when I purchase anything that is sold BY Amazon. It will arrive two days later for exactly the purchase price that I see listed.

With the iPad coming on the scene I’m a little surprised to see that Amazon has chosen to go this path. The price difference is trivial, only $1.75, but it certainly rankles to pay *more* for something that requires far less overhead to print, store, handle and ship than its physical counterpart. I’m sure that the price is being driven by some odd publisher-determined model.

Companies have always been in business to make money. But am I mistaken in that, in this era, they are so much more brazenly about squeezing every last penny out of you and being completely blatant about it?

Heck, I understand that both AT&T and Verizon Wireless, instead of continuing to offer a somewhat reasonable value with their unlimited plans, are looking to move BACK to forcing you to purchase buckets of minutes / data and then gleefully charging you overage fees again.

I’m personally looking for companies that I can partner with – someone that I can pay a fair price to and expect fair service from them. They make a reasonable profit and I get value for my investment. It seems many businesses today are intent only on adversarial relationships with their customers and spend a tremendous effort on extracting every last cent from you for their services. It’s no wonder that brand loyalty and customer satisfaction are so low these days. If you are squeezing your customers so hard, it does not take much to push them over the edge to find another provider or to become upset with your services. People are a lot more tolerant of companies that work with them rather than against them.

The little things in life – Hershey’s Chocolate Milk Mix

It’s been getting harder and harder lately to find Hershey’s Chocolate Milk Mix. I could wax all poetic about how it is the best out there but this blog entry does a great job of it.

So, as I approach the mid-point of my current container, I put on the grocery list to pick up some more. Michelle came home yesterday and mentioned that our local Publix does not have any. “No Worries”  I say, “I’ll just check on line to see where it can be found or maybe even ordered.”.

These folks kind of describe my feelings here. Only since this was over a year ago, I think my own quest will be in vain. I’m going to put out a feeler to my friends in Canada in case Hershey’s up there is not quite so cruel, but you can only carry so much of this stuff on a plane.

One of the great things about living in this day and age is that you can see new wonders appear on virtually a daily basis. I remember when Sony Walkmans were a groundbreaking idea and now we have solid state devices that can hold many orders of magnitude more entertainment and last many times longer on a charge (or set of batteries back then).

The downside of this is that, where folks of the previous generation may have been able to rely on products and institutions remaining virtually unchanged for their entire lives, I find that I have to continue to rethink things that I heretofore regarded as sacrosanct.

Something as innocuous as chocolate milk mix is only unimportant if you’re satisfied with it. There are plenty of options out there that I tried in years gone by. Quik was more sugar than chocolate, the syrups just don’t seem to blend all that well so you end up with gobs and hunks floating around in your cup. Only the finely powdered Hershey’s Mix with it’s pleasing chocolate-to-sugar ratio made the cut.

So, I have a can of ovaltine here – what I regard as “The Shawshank Redemption” of chocolate powders since, like the move, the product name does nothing to enlighten you as to it’s purpose – that I will be sampling shortly.

Can you think of a product that you use regularly that you don’t even think about that would cause you to stumble and have to rethink and reevaluate a bunch of different options before you were comfortable again? It can be anything from toothpaste to a brand of flour or detergent to that motor oil that you use whenever you overhaul your motorcycle engine.

RosaMia Restaurant Alpharetta

I’ve been to RosaMia 3 times now and each time have been very pleasantly impressed.

A little on the large side, their lasagna is spectacular. Gastronomic athletes may be willing to finish it but I find it much more satisfying to share it or take some home with me. Equally good has been their pizza and their Panini sandwiches (with a salad) which are exactly the right size and surprisingly tasty.

The service has always been pleasant, timely and efficient and the price is exactly in line with what I am willing to pay for a lunch trek to a restaurant.

Definitely a keeper, I have yet to be disappointed here.

Cabernet Restaurant Alpharetta

I’ve been to Cabernet Restaurant for lunch a few times in my 5 plus years working in Alpharetta and it’s usually been just OK. That atmosphere  and pricing has always been a little higher-end than I tend to favor. But it seemed like it should be worthwhile as a treat.

Today I suggested to the group I was with that we should try Cabernet to see how it’s doing these days.

I have to say I was somewhat disappointed.

The service was just slow. From arriving at the front and waiting for someone to show up to seat us to every interaction with the waiter it just all took too long.  I think the situation was, even though the dining room was not even half full, there were simply not enough wait staff to host even that small a lunch crowd.

I was going to order their Filet mignon but waiting for the waiter to show up to take our order made me rethink trusting them to cook a steak. I figure that a restaurant that cannot manage its dining room probably isn’t doing so well managing the kitchen either.

I ended up ordering a Turkey Wrap which was the best thing on my plate but still pretty bland. It came with “hand cut potato chips” that were among the most tasteless I’ve ever come across. If I had been able to find a server I’d have asked for ketchup to at least give them some semblance of vitality. Also included was coleslaw – I’m more a fan of vinegar rather than creamy coleslaw – this had the distinction of being neither one nor the other and still retaining its ability to be unappetizing.

For the occasions when my drink glass was not empty it was half the time filled with the wrong drink.

One of my party did comment that the waiter knew how to deliver the menu recitation and, when he had made his way to our table I must admit he was effective at making choice items on the menu sound appealing. But that, alas, had to be the only really good thing I can say.

I will not be returning.

Staying Abreast of Latest Books

My taste in books spans from the serious (such as “The God Delusion”)  through to the fantastic (pick anything by “Peter F Hamilton” or “John Scalzi”)  through to comics (such as Dilbert, FoxTrot and XKCD).

An issue I’m facing right now is how to easily stay on top of new releases by authors that I favor.

For news and most notifications these days I can take advantage of RSS feeds and aggregate them in a single place – I use Google Reader – this lets me stay on top of the latest and greatest from a wide variety of sources without having to constantly be visiting and revisiting sites checking for changes.

I believe I now own every one of the non-anthology Dilbert books available (the anthologies IMHO are just a waste of time since they just rehash comics but collect them together in a theme). So I went to Amazon expecting to find some kind of Dilbert or Scott Adams RSS feed that I could just plug into my aggregator and when a new book becomes available it would pop up for me and then I could choose whether it was something I wanted to pick up or not.

Imagine my surprise to find that this kind of service is remarkably rarer than I thought. Amazon doesn’t appear to offer anything like this, although some older message board postings I saw indicate that you used to be able to subscribe to email alerts for new Author publications.

In the case of Dilbert, I went specifically to the website to see if something was available there. Scott Adam’s is a tech savvy kind of guy – he was publishing his email address and not-so-regular newsletters at a time when most authors were still viewing the internet with fear and suspicion. But even he doesn’t seem to have this seemingly obvious sales tool available.

Has anybody found a solution to this issue? I’d prefer to have some kind of consistent centralized solution rather than having to track  down every individual author’s web site and then try to fashion something from the content therein.

I *did* find this tracker based off the Amazon site which is exactly what I want but it doesn’t appear to be functional. Probably the API on which it depends is no longer functional / available? It’s a great idea though. Free for you and me, the provider gets a modest kickback from Amazon for directing book purchasing traffic to them.

Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome!

CyberPower Refund Finally Realized.

It took a while but I just wanted to wrap this up.

Yesterday (April 7, 2010) my credit card finally showed the refund! The amount was, as expected, the price I paid minus the shipping costs.

Here is the the final exchange we had in email leading up to the refund.

My follow up on April 2, 2010:

Hi,

Another week has passed. I’m not sure how you personally regard $2,500. But I regard this as a large sum of money.

It has now been 3 weeks (15 of your business days) since you have received the PC that I returned.

I elected to do business with Cyberpower on the strength of a friend’s recommendation in spite of your B+ rating with the Better Business Bureau ( http://www.la.bbb.org/Business-Report/Cyberpower-Inc-13080817 ).

Please respond to this email with your confirmation that the refund in full has been issued.

Marc

With the response being (April 5):

Dear Marc,

According record for RMA under 181144, refund was credited back to your account on 3/31/2010, bank or credit card company will take 2-3 business days to process, if you have any question please email or contact us.

Thank you.

RMA Status

Cyberpower Inc.(888) 900-5180 Ext. 151

I’m pleased that things have finally worked out. It was somewhat disconcerting to have to go around like this to elicit the refund. At the back of my mind I was still holding on to the option to dispute the credit card charge but – looking at the credit card fine print – this option is supposedly one that’s limited to businesses within my physical locale (within about 500 miles). But I imagine in this day of internet purchases, that that anachronism is one that is largely discounted and trotted out by the credit card folks only when they no longer wish to retain a particular customer.

iPAD killing our way of life?

Nope.

Some friends and I were having a discussion where one was lamenting the passing of local book stores and CD shops among other things. This partly in response to the hype regarding the iPad.

My take on this:

I miss record stores.
I miss having to go to the movies to see.. well movies.
I miss having to go to multiple stores to comparison shop.
I miss them all like I miss having a hole in my head 🙂

Gotta keep moving forward!

I LOVE buying my music a single track at a time! I fantasized about this from early high school.

I LOVE that I can see a movie within a month of its release in the comfort of my own home with absolutely wonderful fidelity.

I LOVE popping onto Amazon.com, browsing a few books and ordering one or two to read either physically or having them magically appear on my kindle within seconds.

I LOVE being able to easily compare dates and costs for different flights and then getting the best possible deal for my circumstances and then booking the flight and rental car immediately.

I LOVE that in less than 20 years, I’ll probably be able to book a sub-orbital flight on a Virgin spaceship and experience weightlessness.

I also disagree with the theme of the iPad sounding the death knell for libraries. Books and normal libraries will have a place in the mainstream for another few decades. The libraries especially will have to adapt as people gain more access to information from other sources but it will be their own fault if they, as an institution, fail.

It is valid to have the discussion regarding whether or not the iPad will usher in a new mode of information consumption but I think we’ll find that this is just another tiny, $600 step on an already lengthy road that began with PCs and has been landmarked by laptops, tablets, netbooks, eReaders and the like.

Nothing really new here folks. Very cool? You bet. New… not so much.

CyberPower Refund still pending…

Back on March 5 – a few days after my CyberPower machine raid array went toes up, I received this RMA approval:

Dear Marc,

Your request for a refund has been processed under RMA# xxxxxxx and the computer may be returned to Cyberpower for a refund. The refund is subject to the terms of our warranty policy you agreed to as part of the original purchase.  Please ensure that the computer and other items are well packed and clearly write the RMA # xxxxxx on the outside of the package. You are responsible for shipping the items to Cyberpower at your own expense and it is recommended you insure the package or accept the risk of loss or damage during shipment.  Please ship the computer to the following address:

Cyberpower Inc.

5175 Commerce Dr.

Baldwin Park, CA 91706

_____________________________________________________________________________________

*ITEMS BEING RETURNED FOR REFUND MUST BE RETURNED WITHIN 15 DAYS FROM THE DATE THE RMA IS PROVIDED, OR A 15% RESTOCKING FEE WILL BE ASSESED.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Once we receive the package it usually takes seven to ten business days to inventory the items and process the refund before the credit is posted to the method of payment.  As detailed in our warranty policy the original shipping and handling charges, including rush and fuel surcharge fees, are non-refundable.  All items must be returned and in good condition. The cost of any missing or damaged items will be deducted from your refund.

Please review the Cyberpower warranty located at http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/company/warranty.aspx if you have any questions regarding our return policy.  For status updates send an email to rma.status@cyberpowerpc.com and include your customer and RMA number in the message.

If you had changed a repair RMA to a refund RMA, the UPS Return Shipping Label, that was issued to bring the computer in for repair, will no longer be valid. As stated in the warranty, all shipping charges are non-refundable and we do not cover freight charges to bring back any items for refund.  Should you elect to use the UPS Return Shipping Label, there will be a $50 charge deducted from the total refund amount.

Cyberpower Warranty:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/company/warranty.asp

______________________________________________________________________________________

RETURN AND REFUND POLICY: (a) 30-day money back guarantee is on all notebook and desktop computer systems. For the first 30 days from the date of the invoice, CyberPower will refund your purchase price on returned product. Shipping charge, handling charge, & fuel surcharge are not refundable. A 15% restocking fee is applied to all returned product between the 31st day and the 45th day after the invoice date.

No refund or credit is allowed after 45 days from the date of the invoice. (b) For part purchases: All returned items must be purchased from CyberPower and returned in good condition within 30 days from the original invoice date.

No refund or credit is allowed after 30 days from the date of the invoice.

ALL Products to be returned first require obtaining CyberPower’s written permission via an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) number. Product must be securely packed and delivered to CyberPower in an undamaged condition. Shipping charges are non-refundable.

RMA Status

Cyberpower Inc.

(888) 900-5180 Ext. 151

I went ahead and shipped off the computer the next day. I sent it with signature required and I insured it. From the terms above it looks like my better bet would have been to set it up as a repair RMA and then call and change to a return RMA. They would have charged me only $50. As it is I ended up spending $91 to ship it 🙁

Anyway a few days later I received this:

Dear MARC BOURASSA, your package for RMA# xxxxxx has been received. Please do not reply to this email, since replies to this message are routed to an unmonitored box. For status updates please email rma.status@cyberpowerpc.com and include your customer and RMA numbers in the message.

CyberPower Inc.

I waited just under two weeks and sent them this:

Hi,

I need to get an update on this. It’s been nearly 2 weeks since my return was received by CyberPower.

This was not a simply return because I decided I didn’t want the merchandise, but rather suffered from the catastrophic failure of my raid array which erased everything on my system. Exactly the sort of thing a raid array is supposed to guard against.

The tech working with me wanted me to rebuild the array and start again, but since we did not know what had happened in the first place, there was no way to guarantee that the raid array would not simply fail again. I depend heavily upon my primary machine for work and home finances not to mention all the usual entertainment purposes. I could not spend that kind of money and have a black cloud of impending failure constantly over my head.

I would ask that you refund the entire, shipped cost of the machine in addition to the $91 that it cost me to ship it back to you.

$2480.27 + $91 = $2,571 is my expectation.

I appreciate your attention in this matter,

Marc

And a day later they responded:

Dear Marc,

As detailed in our refund policy the original shipping and handling fee is none refundable, customer’s respond to ship the system back for refund, once we receive the package it usually takes seven to ten business days to inventory the items and process the refund before the credit is posted to the method of payment. As detailed in our warranty policy the original shipping and handling charges, including rush and fuel surcharge fees, are non-refundable. All items must be returned and in good condition.

The cost of any missing or damaged items will be deducted from your refund.

RMA Status

Cyberpower Inc.

(888) 900-5180 Ext. 151

Naturally I wanted some more detail:

Hi there,

OK, fair enough. It’s been ten business days as of today.

Marc

And so now I’m waiting:

Dear Marc,

For the refund status, as per the information from our accounting department, it is under processing and the amount is waiting for approval, and we will follow up with it.

Thank You

RMA Status

Cyberpower Inc.

(888) 900-5180 Ext. 151

I suppose they could be really busy, but many of us consider $2,500 a lot of money and I’d sure like to see my refund soon.

I’ll reiterate that my friend from whom I got the CyberPower recommendation is still very happy with his machine, so my experience could have been just a fluke. When the raid failed I was already trying to get ahold of them for why my machine had already spontaneously rebooted once and took exactly 5 minutes to shut down (power off after windows shutdown). So I was not very confident with the machine already when my raid array failed.

Computers are fickle, but it would sure have been nice to have done this locally. I might even have been able to get it repaired and shipping would not be such a burden. I still can’t find any local boutique-computer shops that would be able to do this.

I very nearly bought one from my local MicroCenter. But theirs came with only 4 Dimm slots and, since it’s nearly impossible to get 4 Gbyte Dimms, and any that *are* available cost a fortune, the best I could do was an 8 Gbyte system. I really wanted at least a 12 Gbyte system for some of the picture work I want to do. And because it’s cool.

How Do *You* Manage Your Credit Card Use?

When I listen to Clark Howard (a local consumer advocate) I sometimes wonder if I’m alone in my approach to credit in particular and spending in general.

I’ve had a credit card since I was in my late teens. My perception of the word “credit” in the name “credit card” was always that the Credit really only extended as far as the grace period from when I purchased the item until when payment was due on the account.

I have never held a balance on a credit card.

When my wife and I started living together we actually merged our finances at that time and I undertook to manage the household finances.
In the arena of credit we had only two rules, we would discuss big purchases, and that we would make no purchases on a credit card that would not be fully funded by the time the credit card bill was due.

Everybody needs a safety net, these days mine is provided by a home equity line of credit. Something that can be dipped into should an emergency arise or if you have a project to do and it makes more sense to do it now and pay for it in arrears (such as a tremendous sale on something that you were already planning, and saving, to purchase).

Back, before I owned a home, my local bank was able to make available to me a $5,000 line of unsecured revolving credit. This was MASSIVELY better than relying on my credit card for such debt as the interest rate was more in line with a car loan than that of a loan shark which, I’m sorry to say, is the nicest thing I can say about credit card interest rates.

So we live within our means.

I also receive with disgust those awful Cash Advance Checks. I have some sitting in front of me right now. I honestly cannot see anything good about them. You get charged a premium to take out the money and you begin paying an insane rate of interest on them immediately. Certainly you pay more than you could ever hope to earn in all but the riskiest stock ventures. In my house those Cash Advance Checks are immediately consigned to the shredder along with a few choice words directed toward the marketers responsible for them.

I have my credit card set up to pay off in full, automatically, directly from my bank account so that I do not have to risk the check going astray in the mail (this has happened before).

For any other bills that I need to pay, I pay those immediately when I receive the bill. Why gamble that I won’t forget about it and miss the due date? The interest I may earn, even when interest was in full integer digits, was always puny and never worth the risk.

The amount of money that I have saved in not paying late fees and not pissing it away in ridiculous interest charges can easily buy me my nice new computer system several times over.

So how do *you* handle your credit and why? I know that there are cool deals out there where people can get money interest free for a period. So they take it and invest it, paying it back before it is due.

FEDEX and my New Computer

So, I’m sitting here at my desk, working from home today since I’m expecting my computer to finally arrive. Every couple of hours I’m checking the status on the FEDEX site (OK, OK, probably more like every half hour).

Then, at about 4:10 I check and see that there’s been a delivery exception. They claim to have tried to deliver the package to my front door (12 feet away from me) about 15 minutes earlier.

Oh no you do-on’t (picture stereotypical black woman wagging her head side to side).

I’m on the phone and I’m *not* happy. The first CSR at FEDEX just puts me on hold and doesn’t come back. After 10 minutes of that I call again (I have multiple phones so I can hedge my bets) and hang up the original call when I get another CSR.

This time I’m getting names, times and documenting everything. I AM PISSED.

She goes away for a while trying to figure out what’s going on and eventually she tells me that the driver has already shut down his scanner and the manager is out for lunch (late lunch that..).

They tell me the driver is one of their most reliable ones and has been with them for a long time so they don’t think it would be a case of him simply skipping my delivery.

But I persist and, to their credit, they are cooperative. Eventually it comes to where they agree that, when the driver comes in, they will ship the package out to me by another courier so it will be with me tonight.

The driver, when he arrived back at the depot actually went back out to do the delivery.

The problem was that someone had made a black mark on the address label on the package that obscured the last digit of my address and he was trying to deliver to the wrong place.

He was a nice guy and I had my computer by about 5:10 so I was not critical of him or the situation. There was a (fairly) reasonable explanation of the problem.

About an hour later I got a fairly terse call from his dispatcher asking if I received the package. I’m pretty sure the story that got back to FEDEX was that I simply didn’t answer the door. The driver did mention that they’d ride him pretty hard if they found out that he’d made an address error.

So kudos to FEDEX for ultimately getting this sorted out. They were willing to do what was necessary to meet their delivery commitment. So my experience ended up being a “Satisfied” rather than “Extremely Pissed” for this transaction.

I was not willing to be too forgiving since I *know* the computer has just been sitting in Atlanta since early Saturday morning and did NOTHING on Monday. By my reckoning I really should have had it 4 days ago. But.. weekends.. what can you do?