Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Blockbuster Drops E-coupons for Some

 

It looks like Blockbuster is also dropping e-coupons for some members, while grandfathering others. Blockbuster Drops E-coupons for Some
mikek
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:16:26 GMT

I am one of the "grandfathered" plans, so far.

My first thought on this was 'are they that stupid?' However when you think about it with the Total Access program, do you REALLY need another rental each month? As it is I sometimes have trouble using my free rental, free 'favorites' (old movie) & exchanging in all my movies-by-mail to get new ones. Throw in my gold rewards program (also grandfathered I believe) where I can get a favorite for each new release I rent Sunday - Thursday and I rarely pay full price for a movie.

But I do not want to give up those free rentals. They do help fill in when I have nothing to return.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

UI Stupidity

I was nosing around Twitter since I just setup an account there. I hit the Design page and saw......hex numbers? Not real helpful. I HATE working with colors this way.

The Joys of Budget Billing

For years Dominion East Ohio, previous East Ohio Gas, offered budget billing to its customers. This allows us to average the $300+ bill in January with the $20 in July. Although some complain about the $1000+ bill at the end of the year, I & my family have never had a problem with it. Dominion has also gotten better at estimating, and adjusts the budget quarterly instead of annually as the did.

One downside though is it takes awhile for them to figure out things have changed. I had my furnace replaced a few years back. I went from what was estimated at an 80,000 BTU gravity furnace to a 20,000 (as I recall) BTU high-efficiency forced air furnace. The first winter my budget as $125/month, in part because of expected high energy cost from hurricane Katrina. The spike in price never happened. Add in a mild winter & my keeping the house on the cool side (65 while I am there, 60 while I'm not) and I built up a bit of a credit.

In fact since I have yet to get a replacement dryer my current bill is < $20. I just checked and I still have a $300+ credit on my bill. And that is after NOT paying anything for at least 4 months, and only paying $25 on my budget before that. I'm guessing I will finally catch up this winter, unless they do something wild with my budget again.

IPHONE BILL - The Stupidity of it all

 

I came across this post from Gary about iJustine getting a 300 page phone bill. Primarily from her 30,000 or so text messages. For an old fart like me that seems like a lot of texting. My thumbs hurt in sympathy ;). She does explain what seems like a high number of texts in a follow up entry.

Even as an e-bill this is stupid. If you are on an unlimited plan why can't they summarize the number of text messages per day? Someone pointed out that AT&T does that already with unlimited internet usage. Same goes for cell bills. My brother gets unlimited nights & weekends (and to his wife) with Sprint. He gets a detail for every call made that falls into his unlimited plan. Why? A summary of the minutes falling into 'unlimited' would be fine. Detail anything that would fall outside of that. Has anyone REALLY looked at each number they call on a cell bill?

I finally got my first bill from AT&T in a cardboard box containing 300 pages of it. Apparently, they give you a detailed transaction of every text message sent and received. Completely unnecessary.

Sign up for e-billing! Stop the madness!

[ repost? ]

IPHONE BILL
ijustine
Mon, 13 Aug 2007 07:27:43 GMT