This is my best tip for PB&J - Mix them together before spreading them on the bread, small kids like it better, and you can mix it up ahead of time, also, try honey, corn syrup, or molasses with peanut butter, a little goes a long way.
LETTER SENT TO INVENTOR OF MAGICJACK PLUS MODEL ON 5-25-2011:
Please take a moment to read this entire email. I want to tell you what I experienced regarding your product and maybe shed some light.
I purchased a MagicJack last year and experienced no problems. The product worked as advertised and I was pleased. I suggested to several friends that this product was a great alternative for people to get out from under the giant conglomerate AT&T and avoid any further hassles from mystery item billing incidents.
Then about a week ago, I received a flyer in the mail regarding MagicJack PLUS. I was excited about the upgrade. The flyer had a phone number, so I called it and ordered the device. Disappointed that it was an automated call, but I dealt with it. The order came in the mail today. Low and behold, it was only an ORIGINAL model MagicJack. My reason for wanting to purchase the PLUS model, was because no physical computer was necessary for this model, and that would work great upstairs, and aside the other benefits the PLUS model offers.
Now, here is where you really need to take note:
Since MagicJack customer service does not exist in the conventional manner, such as a live person to talk to via a phone line, I proceeded to do a "Live Chat" via your website. It took one hour and 24 minutes to finally get an agent through the entire process to return the item. Four agents cut me off in the middle of conversation and disconnected. But that was just the start. Not only was the return process absolutely ridiculously difficult, but extremely time consuming, non-stop typing back in forth with agents, and then discover that the MagicJack Plus is not even available yet. The brochure sent to us in the mail did not mention this, and on top of that, we were shipped an Original model, even though the brochure clearly states a PLUS and the picture on the brochure is a PLUS model.
Okay, Let's overlook the one hour and 24 minutes. Let's overlook the hassle of the return. Here is my reason for contacting you:
THIS PRODUCT WORKS.
Why bother to cheapen it with a gimmick like no customer service phone line?
Why the complicated and long-winded live chat return policy?
Most important: WHY SEND AN ORIGINAL MODEL INSTEAD OF THE PLUS MODEL?
If the PLUS model wasn't going to be available until July of this year, then why accept my credit card and send me an original?
Lastly: I would completely understand why all this would have taken place if the product was crap, however, your product does exactly as advertised, which makes no sense to me that you have allowed this type of mishandling, and basically committed fraud to the public.
Dan, you could easily have charged over double the price for the PLUS and would have been successful with that price, because it's worth it just to get away from AT&T, but then to have your company ship the ORIGINAL instead of the PLUS is flat out fraud. Then to make it worse, the time consuming issue of trying to send it back and credit your Visa account is overwhelmingly a joke. You did not have to cheapen your product with this gimmicky type of customer service and no real phone number to talk to an agent. Instead, you have to sit there for over an hour and type the same message to four different agents. I am copying this letter and blogging it next week. I feel it is important that you understand how wrong all this is. It didn't need to go in this direction. YOU HAVE A VIABLE, WORKING, GREAT PRODUCT, yet once again, CUSTOMER SERVICE is the least important for yet another company.
I will be blogging this email via the Internet this weekend so as to warn more potential victims. My goal is to help others avoid this ridiculous struggle. If you have any comments, they would be greatly appreciated as I am still dumbfounded why this approach to customer service is even considered with a great product.
We are concentrating on paying our mortgage off. We quit using credit cards over 15 years ago. It took us so long to get them paid off but we did. Now our goal is to just pay our home off so we can have less stress in our home. The economy is not looking good and we are deeply concerned about our income. If the house was paid for, we could survive but without a home, we would be in more strss.
If it wasn't for scholarships, I would not have been able to finish college. It was a true life saver for me. It's bit of a hassle getting a scholarship, but it's well worth the effort.
I use comcasts basic service for $10 which has fox, cbs, abc, cnn and some pbs stations. also antenna tv. I heard netflix is good too. cable is really not needed anymore. and I got tired of the rising rates too.
And the best thing about parking in downtown Denver, you no longer have to have that dollar in change: you can swipe your card.
Scoff at the ridiculousness if you want, but that feature of the meters here saved my bacon when I was coming for a job interview and didn't realize the address of the place was downtown (Google Maps had lied to me). I didn't have any change, or any cash, and I was about 2 minutes from being less than 5 minutes early. o_O;
Wow! These are wonderful tips Andrea! I’ll surely give a try to the ones which I haven’t yet.
I’m particularly surprised with #11. I never know that sleep deprivation could make you fat. I used to believe it otherwise. Now that I’m enlightened, I’ll probably invest more in making up for my usual lack of sleep. And oh, the kittie’s cute. =)
Music has helped my kids learn to see patterns. They can see the benefit of practice as they learn songs and improve proficiency. Over the longer term, they are learning about a topic that will improve their cultural literacy and make it easier for them to fit in with a more cultured class as adults.
Congrats on your upcoming wedding! I've noticed a lot of brides doing this. Pick a color or a color family and have the bridesmaids/bridesmen pick out whatever they want. My wedding was tiny, so my sister was my only attendant, and we just went shopping and picked out (oddly enough) a dark blue dress that suited her and was affordable. It was so much less stressful than dealing with a "real" bridesmaid dress.
Figuring out what to do about our condo and huge mortgage. We were denied a refinance as we owe too much, and it's unlikely that we could sell. I recently met with a realtor who told us there have been so many foreclosures/short sales in our neighborhood, we've lost lots of value and would most likely have to bring twice as much cash to closing as I have in my (6-months' take home pay) emergency fund. Ugh.
We have cut our overhead as much as we can in every other area and live very frugally, except for our mortgage, which is just too big for us. I can't figure out how we can cut our housing expenses, short of selling the damn thing and emptying out our e-fund/raiding our retirement funds in the process. Which doesn't seem smart.
I had one. A charge came up in it from a hotel miles from where I was. When I called NetSpend, they refused to take it off.
They also charge $1 every time you use the card as a credit card, and $2 every time you use it as a debit card. Even if yu make a $1 purchase, it can end up costing you $2 or $3.
It almost smells like a scam where visa is requiring you to know the exact remaining balance to use the card, and counting on you giving up the small balance - multiplied by millions.
Kinda like the "fractionof a cent" scam in Office Space.
The constant battle of medical debt!! It is literally driving me crazy. We have a bit of a higher deductible (2500.- per person) in order to afford the monthly premium. All it takes is one person to have a minor surgery and *poof* 2500.- in the hole! On top of that throw in some braces and oral surgery, again for something minor, and *bam* the next thing you know you are staring at close to 10k in medical debt. I try to look at the bright side and be thankful that it is only minor medical issues, but - man it still hurts the pocket book.
Dan, you and your wife are a good example of exercising sound judgment when trying to get the most out of your money. Extreme couponing is just that--extreme. Considering the value of your time, spending hours per week searching and buying items that you don't really need can end up being wasteful. Instead, finding a balance between maximizing your time and savings is ideal. I work for the blog at mangomoney.com where we offer money-saving advice that is easy to incorporate into your normal life--including the supermarket. Check us out.
This is a great list of suggestions to reduce spending on video entertainment without giving up on much content. Often, when money gets tight, folks cut out the "luxury" expenses in favor of paying for the necessities, and entertainment usually takes a hit. These alternatives can save consumers up to $100 a month on entertainment expenses. I work at the mangomoney.com blog where we offer many money-saving tips you can apply to other areas of your life. Check out our "Cheap Fun" section for more inexpensive entertainment ideas!
Tom, while vampire or phantom power usage does exist, you make a good point that in order to realize significant savings people should focus on larger changes. The couple bucks per year you could save by unplugging certain devices when they are not in use is far outweighed by the energy savings from replacing all your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs--up to $50 over the life of the bulb! Check out our other money- and energy-saving tips and let us know what you think!
Meg, your list includes some great suggestions for getting organized. Other sources for organizing tips have often said that being disorganized costs you money--you can't find what you what and purchase redundant items, you misplace mail that contains checks, documents entitling you to tax write-offs, etc. That being said, I think a small investment in some containers will soon pay for themselves, and good organizational habits can transfer to money management and save you even more money!
Old maps or maps from atlases, especially if they're ancestry themed, make cool art!
This is my best tip for PB&J - Mix them together before spreading them on the bread, small kids like it better, and you can mix it up ahead of time, also, try honey, corn syrup, or molasses with peanut butter, a little goes a long way.
I liked you on facebook:)
Saving for a down payment for a house when we will be needing new cards soon as well.
My biggest financial problem in life right now is enormous student loans...
LETTER SENT TO INVENTOR OF MAGICJACK PLUS MODEL ON 5-25-2011:
Please take a moment to read this entire email. I want to tell you what I experienced regarding your product and maybe shed some light.
I purchased a MagicJack last year and experienced no problems. The product worked as advertised and I was pleased. I suggested to several friends that this product was a great alternative for people to get out from under the giant conglomerate AT&T and avoid any further hassles from mystery item billing incidents.
Then about a week ago, I received a flyer in the mail regarding MagicJack PLUS. I was excited about the upgrade. The flyer had a phone number, so I called it and ordered the device. Disappointed that it was an automated call, but I dealt with it. The order came in the mail today. Low and behold, it was only an ORIGINAL model MagicJack. My reason for wanting to purchase the PLUS model, was because no physical computer was necessary for this model, and that would work great upstairs, and aside the other benefits the PLUS model offers.
Now, here is where you really need to take note:
Since MagicJack customer service does not exist in the conventional manner, such as a live person to talk to via a phone line, I proceeded to do a "Live Chat" via your website. It took one hour and 24 minutes to finally get an agent through the entire process to return the item. Four agents cut me off in the middle of conversation and disconnected. But that was just the start. Not only was the return process absolutely ridiculously difficult, but extremely time consuming, non-stop typing back in forth with agents, and then discover that the MagicJack Plus is not even available yet. The brochure sent to us in the mail did not mention this, and on top of that, we were shipped an Original model, even though the brochure clearly states a PLUS and the picture on the brochure is a PLUS model.
Okay, Let's overlook the one hour and 24 minutes. Let's overlook the hassle of the return. Here is my reason for contacting you:
THIS PRODUCT WORKS.
Why bother to cheapen it with a gimmick like no customer service phone line?
Why the complicated and long-winded live chat return policy?
Most important: WHY SEND AN ORIGINAL MODEL INSTEAD OF THE PLUS MODEL?
If the PLUS model wasn't going to be available until July of this year, then why accept my credit card and send me an original?
Lastly: I would completely understand why all this would have taken place if the product was crap, however, your product does exactly as advertised, which makes no sense to me that you have allowed this type of mishandling, and basically committed fraud to the public.
Dan, you could easily have charged over double the price for the PLUS and would have been successful with that price, because it's worth it just to get away from AT&T, but then to have your company ship the ORIGINAL instead of the PLUS is flat out fraud. Then to make it worse, the time consuming issue of trying to send it back and credit your Visa account is overwhelmingly a joke. You did not have to cheapen your product with this gimmicky type of customer service and no real phone number to talk to an agent. Instead, you have to sit there for over an hour and type the same message to four different agents. I am copying this letter and blogging it next week. I feel it is important that you understand how wrong all this is. It didn't need to go in this direction. YOU HAVE A VIABLE, WORKING, GREAT PRODUCT, yet once again, CUSTOMER SERVICE is the least important for yet another company.
I will be blogging this email via the Internet this weekend so as to warn more potential victims. My goal is to help others avoid this ridiculous struggle. If you have any comments, they would be greatly appreciated as I am still dumbfounded why this approach to customer service is even considered with a great product.
Sincerely,
Devin Debow
I am following you on Twitter and I like you on Facebook
We are concentrating on paying our mortgage off. We quit using credit cards over 15 years ago. It took us so long to get them paid off but we did. Now our goal is to just pay our home off so we can have less stress in our home. The economy is not looking good and we are deeply concerned about our income. If the house was paid for, we could survive but without a home, we would be in more strss.
Credit card machines for parking have changed my life! Also, congrats on the job!
If it wasn't for scholarships, I would not have been able to finish college. It was a true life saver for me. It's bit of a hassle getting a scholarship, but it's well worth the effort.
At many Panera Bread restaurants, you can take your travel mug and get a travel refill for $0.92 plus tax!
I use comcasts basic service for $10 which has fox, cbs, abc, cnn and some pbs stations. also antenna tv. I heard netflix is good too. cable is really not needed anymore. and I got tired of the rising rates too.
And the best thing about parking in downtown Denver, you no longer have to have that dollar in change: you can swipe your card.
Scoff at the ridiculousness if you want, but that feature of the meters here saved my bacon when I was coming for a job interview and didn't realize the address of the place was downtown (Google Maps had lied to me). I didn't have any change, or any cash, and I was about 2 minutes from being less than 5 minutes early. o_O;
And I got the job. :)
Wow! These are wonderful tips Andrea! I’ll surely give a try to the ones which I haven’t yet.
I’m particularly surprised with #11. I never know that sleep deprivation could make you fat. I used to believe it otherwise. Now that I’m enlightened, I’ll probably invest more in making up for my usual lack of sleep. And oh, the kittie’s cute. =)
Looking forward to more of your posts!
Absolutely worth it.
Music has helped my kids learn to see patterns. They can see the benefit of practice as they learn songs and improve proficiency. Over the longer term, they are learning about a topic that will improve their cultural literacy and make it easier for them to fit in with a more cultured class as adults.
Congrats on your upcoming wedding! I've noticed a lot of brides doing this. Pick a color or a color family and have the bridesmaids/bridesmen pick out whatever they want. My wedding was tiny, so my sister was my only attendant, and we just went shopping and picked out (oddly enough) a dark blue dress that suited her and was affordable. It was so much less stressful than dealing with a "real" bridesmaid dress.
Balancing our competing savings priorities: retirement, college funds for the offspring, and making available some fun money!
Figuring out what to do about our condo and huge mortgage. We were denied a refinance as we owe too much, and it's unlikely that we could sell. I recently met with a realtor who told us there have been so many foreclosures/short sales in our neighborhood, we've lost lots of value and would most likely have to bring twice as much cash to closing as I have in my (6-months' take home pay) emergency fund. Ugh.
We have cut our overhead as much as we can in every other area and live very frugally, except for our mortgage, which is just too big for us. I can't figure out how we can cut our housing expenses, short of selling the damn thing and emptying out our e-fund/raiding our retirement funds in the process. Which doesn't seem smart.
I had one. A charge came up in it from a hotel miles from where I was. When I called NetSpend, they refused to take it off.
They also charge $1 every time you use the card as a credit card, and $2 every time you use it as a debit card. Even if yu make a $1 purchase, it can end up costing you $2 or $3.
It almost smells like a scam where visa is requiring you to know the exact remaining balance to use the card, and counting on you giving up the small balance - multiplied by millions.
Kinda like the "fractionof a cent" scam in Office Space.
The constant battle of medical debt!! It is literally driving me crazy. We have a bit of a higher deductible (2500.- per person) in order to afford the monthly premium. All it takes is one person to have a minor surgery and *poof* 2500.- in the hole! On top of that throw in some braces and oral surgery, again for something minor, and *bam* the next thing you know you are staring at close to 10k in medical debt. I try to look at the bright side and be thankful that it is only minor medical issues, but - man it still hurts the pocket book.
Dan, you and your wife are a good example of exercising sound judgment when trying to get the most out of your money. Extreme couponing is just that--extreme. Considering the value of your time, spending hours per week searching and buying items that you don't really need can end up being wasteful. Instead, finding a balance between maximizing your time and savings is ideal. I work for the blog at mangomoney.com where we offer money-saving advice that is easy to incorporate into your normal life--including the supermarket. Check us out.
This is a great list of suggestions to reduce spending on video entertainment without giving up on much content. Often, when money gets tight, folks cut out the "luxury" expenses in favor of paying for the necessities, and entertainment usually takes a hit. These alternatives can save consumers up to $100 a month on entertainment expenses. I work at the mangomoney.com blog where we offer many money-saving tips you can apply to other areas of your life. Check out our "Cheap Fun" section for more inexpensive entertainment ideas!
Tom, while vampire or phantom power usage does exist, you make a good point that in order to realize significant savings people should focus on larger changes. The couple bucks per year you could save by unplugging certain devices when they are not in use is far outweighed by the energy savings from replacing all your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs--up to $50 over the life of the bulb! Check out our other money- and energy-saving tips and let us know what you think!
Meg, your list includes some great suggestions for getting organized. Other sources for organizing tips have often said that being disorganized costs you money--you can't find what you what and purchase redundant items, you misplace mail that contains checks, documents entitling you to tax write-offs, etc. That being said, I think a small investment in some containers will soon pay for themselves, and good organizational habits can transfer to money management and save you even more money!