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Archive for December, 2006
Vons grocery stores, politics, and retards
Dec 29th
Okay this blog is to show you how ignorant people can be. You probably have some stories you can tell and my hope is to compare these stories just to see how dumb people can be all across the board by city, state, and country. I got married September 2006, pretty recent, and for a woman changing your last name can be a real hassle not to mention an extensive waiting period. Well, last Friday I went to the California Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new card with my married name on it. They punched a hole in it over the expiration date of the card and issued me one of those temporary licenses on a printed out paper.
Well, today I went to the Vons grocery store and bought some groceries and in my basket I was attempting to buy some O’Douls which is non-alcoholic beer. The cashier scanned all my items and then asked for my driver’s license to verify my age when she was scanning the O’Douls. I looked at her funny and pulled it out anyway since I am above legal drinking age. She looked at the hole punched in it and said sorry I can’t read the expiration on your card so I can’t sell this to you. I said are you kidding me? It’s non- alcoholic beer for crying out loud. She said I can’t let me call my manager. As she was waiting for the store manager to pick up I said it has my picture on it and my date of birth. She again said she can’t. After speaking with the manager she refused to sell me the O’Douls. I paid for my items with my credit card and went to speak to the store manager.
As I spoke with the store manager about it he explained that my license was invalid and that if I had the temporary paper from the DMV I could purchase the O’Douls. (Thought to self…who in the world carries their paper temporary license with them everywhere they go?) I told him that was ridiculous because it has my date of birth on it and that you don’t need a license to purchase O’Douls. He said state law requires them to card even on non-alcoholic beverages…I told him that they weren’t carding everyone on their soda purchases today and then asked him if my drivers license is so invalid why did the cashier let me pay by credit card?
That pretty much left him speechless in front of the customer he was checking in his line. What is wrong with people? I know this kind of stuff doesn’t just happen to me, but it would be interesting to hear similar stories because I don’t run by them too often unless it’s happening to me. I just don’t get it.
Online Coupon Codes
Dec 28th
Online shopping has become an extremely popular way of going to the store. Who wants to deal with jammed parking lots, crowds, and long lines? NOT ME!!! It’s especially frustrating when you set out to buy that one specific item, fight the traffic, and mazes, only to find out they’re out of stock. Online shopping is great because you can order what you want, click, and pay…you can have your order arrive anytime from 2 weeks to the very next day! And again…NO LINES & NO CROWDS. My favorite thing is being able to find what I’m looking for cheaper online with reasonable shipping or if I’m lucky free shipping. Even better is finding online coupon codes to save me even more $$$. My favorite place to find my coupon codes is by going to Fat Wallet Coupon Codes There you can find reviews on products, coupon codes, and a cool forum for all the latest online promo codes to almost any retailer. You can use their search engine to see if there are any special offerings from your favorite retailer. Go check ‘em out and see how much you can save. This is the best site I’ve found for finding promo codes and other online coupons and best of all its all free. And that’s my favorite price. 
Best Buy customer service vs. Circuit City customer service
Dec 22nd
Ok. Nowdays everyone is shopping on the internet. Can you blame them? Who wants to deal with the long lines and attitudes of people around you. One of the great new options stores are offering is online ordering and in-store pick-up. This saves the customer shipping fees and gives them the opportunity to swing by and pick it up at their leisure. Or, well, at least it’s supposed to.
I am one of those customers. The idea is grand, but with Best Buy it NEVER works out that way! Everytime I order online with Best Buy for in-store pick up I not only have to wait in line forever, but they always have a problem with my order. The first few times I ordered online with instore pick up it worked beautifully…I was hooked. But since Christmas 2005 it has been a nightmare with them.
Example: I ordered online and never got a verification to pick up my order like their site says you should. So I called and the store employee said they were getting ready to put back my order because I hadn’t come to pick it up. I explained how I never got an email that it was ready and she said that I should have. I went on to Bestbuy.com and logged in and sure enough it still said order in process…not complete like others on my order history page. I printed that and took it down there and the girl was speechless. All she could say is to call the online customer service to find out why.
PEOPLE don’t bother with that either…they take 3 days to respond to you and then you get an automated message saying how sorry they are. If you reply to them a few times and over an elapsed period of about 2 weeks they’ll cancel your order.
Rating on Bestbuy customer service 1 star.
Circuit city on the other hand…beautiful. They have an awesome 24 minute $24 guarantee. You order online for instore pick up and if you get down there within 24 minutes and your order is not ready for pick up you get a $24 gift card. Out of 3 online orders with them to pick up in-store, I got 1. This was because they showed one of my items in stock, but it was misplaced in the store. So they were trying to search for it and defaulted on their guarantee and gave me the $24 gift card. Not only that, but they offered me another title of PC software that was comparable and more expensive for the same price I was going to pay for the item they couldn’t locate.
Overall, Circuit City online ordering well exceeds Best Buy. The differences:
Circuit City= Free Shipping on all orders over $25, 24 minute in store pickup or a $24 gift card guarantee, but NO CD’s or DVD’s for in store pick up orders.
Best Buy=Pay shipping almost always, bad customer service online and in store, usually same in prices as Circuit City or a bit lower, don’t know when you should go to pick up your order in store, and when you do a search for a product it doesn’t tell you how much it is until you click on it.
That’s my experience you be the judge. It’ll be interesting to hear what experiences other people are having with online ordering with these two big names in Electronics.
December 2006…the last chance for blockbusters of the year.
Dec 14th
Some good movies have come out this year, but right now I can’t wait to see a few. Why do they always make you wait until the end of the year for some of the good ones?
This weekend December 15th Eragon, Charlotte’s Web, and The Pursuit of Happyness come out.
Eragon is a movie about a dragon rider. The trailers make the special effects and wardrobe look fantastic. It gives you a Lord of the Rings feel just by watching the previews.
Charlotte’s Web…what can I say, they finally made a real life version of the child hood classic.
The Pursuit of Happyness is going to be a tear jerker. The trailers already have me on the edge of my seat. In the short clips I have seen they are able to put you in Will Smith’s character and feel the same emotions and entrapment that one might feel in that situation. Definately going to be an empowering film.
Demeber 20th ROCKY BALBOA IS BACK!!! Yeah he may be old, but he’s still looking pretty good and once Rocky always Rocky right? It’ll be interesting to see him duke it out with guys half his age.
December 22nd I await Ben Stiller and Robin William’s comedy in “Night at the Museum”. You can’t go wrong with these two. If the trailers can make you laugh I’m sure these two will have us rolling on the floors by the time the show is done.
And Finally, December 29th “Pan’s Labyrinth”. Another Fantasy movie. The previews give it a Grimm Brothers feel to it and the costumes and effects are unimaginable!
Can’t wait!
ITT Tech
Dec 14th
I graduated high school in 1997 and held a job that would fund my partying. I had no idea where I wanted to go with my future. Nothing sounded exciting enough. I finally decided to take a few courses of general education at a local college thinking I could knock my general ed out of the way and then figure out a major. I GOT BORED FAST! I got nervous because still after my hard work I didn’t have any clue which direction I wanted to go and thought that I may never know. So I continued working finding a decent paying full time job with benefits. After almost three years there I decided between the two things that interested me. Cooking and computers! Strange combo I know, but they are both very exciting to me. I checked into the culinary school and found out how expensive it was for a short term. In case you thought it was easy, it’s not. The course a 9 month program at a prestige school would run $27,000. That’s just for the Patisserie (baking) program. Sure I would be able to make some unimaginable wedding cakes and desserts, but I wanted the full deal. To continue another 6 months for the chef portion would cost an additional $27,000. Yes, you read right $54,000 for a 13 month program. Seeing as though I was a single mom I did not see anyway that even with financial aid I could afford this. Next stop, technical school…. I checked into a few local colleges and was finding out that I could accomplish the SAME thing through ITT Technical Institute or Devry as any of the jr. colleges or university’s, but in 1/3 of the time. I spoke to a counselor at ITT Tech and found that the prices were still high, but with student loans and financial aid I would probably be able to swing it. So I enrolled. My first quarter seemed pretty normal. I got my text books on time, classes began and ended as I was told before signing my life away, and it seemed like a typical school. I began to enjoy going back to school because I knew where I was going with my schooling and I knew I’d get the degree so many employers want to see now days. Classmates were nice, teachers were nice, and things seemed to flow as I had expected based off of what I was told by the recruiter. Little did I know that would all slowly begin to change…
Ways to save money on your wedding…Part I
Dec 13th
Today couples are spending close to $32,000 for their dream weddings, but there are several ways to save money if you’re on a budget. Trust me I KNOW! My husband and I got engaged May of 2006 and then married four months later in September. We not only had to budget time, but our financial situations would also require budgeting. This meant we had to make quick decisions and looking for ways to keep things beautiful, yet save some money. Weddings are always stressful for both the bride and groom, but the bride usually worries the most. Wanting everything to be “perfect” and just what she’s always dreamed of, the bride needs a high stress threshold to accomplish many of the money saving techniques. This means the bride IS the wedding planner. That alone will save you hundreds to thousands of dollars.
To begin your planning you should first find a location for your ceremony/reception. You don’t want to send out your invitations until you book a place to have your special day. We ran into problems here because of the short time we had to plan everything places were booked on some of the weekends we thought would be our wedding weekend. So we had to play with our date a little bit. If your engagement is longer this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. When we were checking with possible locations the rental fees were astronomical. The average price range was around $7,000 just for the site for 3 hours without catering, decorations, etc. Then the catering would be around $7-$10,000 to come out to the rental location. Then you would have to figure out the table settings on top of all that.
After a couple weeks with unreturned phone calls from possible sites and outrageous quotes, I felt hopeless and eloping to Vegas sounded better all the time. We knew we wanted to get married on the beach and were already getting the ceremony portion taken care of, but the reception location was becoming our problem because there were few places near the ceremony site and the ones we checked into were out of our budget. Finally, I thought about places that I could combine the rental site with the catering. I started calling restaurants and getting quotes from them, when it finally hit me! Why not try a local hotel. I thought of a hotel about a mile away from the beach we wanted to get married on and sure enough…they had accommodations for weddings. They even had 3 wedding packages to choose from and their prices were reasonable. They even offered a beautiful garden area with gazebo that you could have your ceremony at for a low additional cost. So after finding this we were in total agreement that this would not only save us money, but was the perfect distance from the ceremony site so our guests wouldn’t have to go far and out of town guests would have the convenience of staying close to everything.
So the reception site was finalized, but we still had to finalize the ceremony site, but that’s another blog…
