Had I not absolutely needed to make the purchases, I would have surely walked away and never returned.

If you are going to complain about treatment you received to a consumer site, you should at least have enough sense to walk away and to NOT BUY ANYTHING. Coming back for more just adds fuel to the merchant’s fire.

And, honestly, you can’t put card problems down just to over-consumption. We always lived in our means.

This starts out good.

But, then I lost my job and, almost simultaneously, we got hit with a succession of major expenses…transmission work on the car, medical expenses, AC in the house died in the middle of summer, etc.

Then he had a run of bad luck. It’s good that he planned for a rainy day and had some money saved for when bad things happened.

We simply had to turn to plastic to make things work.

Uh, no you didn’t. This is where you start contradicting your first statement of “always living within your means”. Always means all of the time. Even now.

This, on top of draining our savings to pay the other bills, like health insurance.

At least you weren’t using the plastic for everything.

So, yeah, a lot of credit problems probably ARE due to unrestrained buying. But I have to think a lot of it is also due to simply “shit happens.”

I think you will find that much less “stuff happens” to those who are prepared.

Response to the Consumerist post on How Credit Cards Are Getting Meaner.

• Man buys piece of equipment
• Works great through warranty period
• After warranty, equipment starts goes bad
• Six months later, equipment is really bad
• Company selling equipment refuses to help
• Therefore, company selling equipment is evil

I would post on their site, but they have a policy against blaming the consumer in the story and calling him a moron, which is exactly how this would turn out.

Response to the Consumerist post on Gateway Won’t Help Customer Replace Monitor.

First, I read the comics of the day for a bit of levity:

• Questionable Content
• Daily Comics – An assortment of comics from the Houston Chronicle. I started with them back in the mid-nineties when they were about the only site that had the funny pages online.

And then take a look at some of the news and opinion out in the world:

• Daring Fireball – All things macintosh and otherwise interesting
• NSLog();
• Greg in the Desert – Since his site was named “For the H*ll of It”
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog
• Consumerist
• LifeHacker
• Unclutterer.com

And then there are the RSS feeds (courtesy of My Yahoo!). I keep thinking of switching to a better feed reader, but that always seems like too much work:

• Rands in Repose – Thoughts on Engineering Management.
• SharkTank – Funny stories of IT with a bunch of crazies posting comments.
• HawkWings – A site dedicated to Mail on the mac, which unfortunately has not been publishing in quite a while.
• 43 Folders – All things Merlin
• Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes – A reminder that I need to gte back to editing my AppleScripts. Unfortunately, they got to the point where they were “good enough” and I have mostly given up on them.
• Mac OSX Hints – Full of hints that I never have the time to implement, but I still try to scan the headlines occasionally.

And, on Sunday I check out the new cards at Post Secret, to make me feel a little better and help me realize my life isn’t nearly as screwed up as it could be.

This got me thinking about how much we pay for ours. Of course, I took the simple way out. Last month, the three lines we have used 2606 minutes for a total of $100.70, or 3.84¢ a minute. Not too shabby, especially since we don’t have a home phone.

• Jumbo, Almond plastic receptacle plates. (They had them in white and Ivory.)
• Flexible inner wall drilling kit. (The one they had on the shelf was missing half the pieces.)
• Florescent utility lights for T-8 bulbs. (I bought some a while back from about $8, but now they are $10 and only support T-12. I may spring the $20 for the improved cold weather ballast, but I’m not ready to do that just yet.)

I did notice that there were a good number of people asking me if I needed help—more than I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe the service is improving.

Response to the Consumerist post on Home Depot Provides Surprisingly Decent Service.

So I went back and checked my records, and found I’d been charged for at least as far back as a year (I was in the bummer tent after that, so I didn’t look further.)

How do you prevent this “travesty”? Pay attention! Read your bills!

Vonage is right and you, sir, are an idiot.

Response to the Consumerist post on Vonage Silently Adds “Optional” Feature, Refuses To Refund Your Money.

Response to the Consumerist post on UBS Will Release Names Of Americans Hiding Money From IRS.

Apparently most people just sign the documents without actually reading them….

Response to the Consumerist post on Mandatory Binding Arbitration: The Worst Choose Your Own Adventure Ever.

1. Guy is a business owner.
2. Guy signs contract to get a loan, using vehicle as collateral.
3. Guy gets money and re-payment schedule.
4. Guy watches as first payment due date goes wizzing by.
5. Guy shows up next day with part of money owed.
6. Company is nice enough to refinance.
7. Guy watches as second payment due date goes wizzing by.
8. Guy gets a knock on the door–a visit from the repo-man.
9. Guy hands over keys.
10. Guy gets money and goes to get car back.
11. Guy is shocked to find it is already going to auction.
12. Guy writes complaint letter to Consumerist.

I’m still not at the point where I see what made him think that there was a different outcome.

Response to the Consumerist post on Auto Title Loans, Illegal In Most States, Even Riskier In Georgia.