Good Day, Amazon.com

Last afternoon I felt sick -still do. I went home early, if you consider 4:30pm early, and was disappointed that my Amazon.com order hadn’t arrived. After about 20 minutes of watching the X-Games big air comp, the door bell goes.

What arrives? My new coaching boots:

As well my Amazon.com order arrived (the same day that BHD became available from the BestBuy warehouse -I definitely won that battle). So I spent last night watching The Rock on Blu-Ray. I must say, the transfer looked better than I expected from a 17 year old movie. As well as I had said earlier Amazon.com does ship from within Canada -c/o DHL-  so it will never be susceptible for taxes/duties, assuming that you are ordering DVDs or Books. I think Amazon.com will be my new shipper of choice.

I’m still feeling kinda sick, so I’m not sure I will make it through the day.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life, Technology No Comments » February 2008

Utility Joy #9582: My Super Cheap??? Ottawa Hydro Bill

(Finally) Got my hydro bill. I have been waiting for -and fearing- the arrival of this bill. I had spoken to them, and knew it was going to be a two month bill. I thought it was going to be huge.

When it arrived it was small… No wait… It was huge… No wait it was small. I can’t decide.

The final tally was $338, but here is the real kicker. It included a $30 new user fee, and a $200 deposit because of my credit. I couldn’t understand -I have very good credit- so I called. Turned out that they didn’t run a credit check so I had to be charged the deposit amount. I told them to run a credit check, they said that there is a $15 fee for that (which I find unbelievable, what the hell is the $30 new account charge for then?!?!?!?!?). So I asked when I got my $200, back. It was going to be added to my bill after 1 year. Not too bad, after some mental math:

Interest on $200 (4% x $200 = $8) - Taxes on interest ( 40% x $8 =  $3.20) = $4.80

So if I put it in a savings account then I’m looking at about $5. So the $15 is a large amount to pay. I decided to just give them the $200 for one year.

I still want to know what the hell the $30 for the new account included.

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On the plus side. My two months of hydro usage was $108. That is $54 a month. That is great! I know that will increase during the summer AC season, but those numbers are very low. Perhaps things are looking up.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life No Comments » February 2008

BestBuy.ca Feud Ends…

…with a draw.

So they replied back today and told me if I didn’t like their terms I could cancel the order.  I poked around a little more and found I could make the same order for Amazon.com for $5 less (even with the sale price). I cancelled the BestBuy order, just as they wished. They didn’t get the sale, but I didn’t get them to admit that they are completely useless. I have some BestBuy Rewards Points so I will still be doing some shopping, but not on DVD/Blu-Ray.

I added one more item to cut down the shipping time even a little bit more, and placed the order. I got an email a few hours ago that it has already shipped. BestBuy.ca continues to provide the worst service in the industry. Amazon.com continues to impress.

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On a side note, I was told today that Amazon.com actually ships from within Canada on DVDs/Books so tax/duty is never an issue. I believe what I was told, and that makes Amazon.com even that more appealing. dotCa/BestBuy/Future Shop may have worked their way right out of my DVD/Blu-Ray market. How fun is that!?!?!

 

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Coaching, Personal Life, Technology 2 Comments » February 2008

Coming Up On Renovation Season

As a first time home-owner I feel like I should have a list of renovations for spring. So I do:

• Replace main floor carpet with hardwood
• Build backyard fence
• Finish second half of basement, including installing bathroom

The last item is probably the most ambitious. I will try to get started on it as soon as possible, although the items are pretty close to priority going forward.

Here are some diagrams of the changes I would like to make in the basement.

Before:

After:

 

 

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life 1 Comment » February 2008

The Last Angry BestBuy.ca Shopper

I’m like that wife on Jerry Springer… I keep getting the crap kicked out of me and I keep coming back!

BestBuy (bricks and mortar and dotCa) have terrible service. There is no denying it. Quite possibly the worst service I have ever encountered, especially when you consider the general price of the items. As bad as the customer service is at the store it is even worse online.

This is the latest situation. Two weeks ago BestBuy -both in store and online- had Black Hawk Down on Blu-Ray -my favourite movie- on sale for $19.99. Of course as the -somewhat- proud owner of a now victorious Blu-Ray player, I went out to get it. Hmmm… Sold out. No problem, I went home to check the remaining stock in other stores. Sold out at both the Kanata store and Ottawa East store. After checking around it was sold out at every store.

No problem, I will order it online and just mark it for store pick-up, to get the price. No dice, for store pick-up it must be in stock. No problem, I will just have it delivered, surely like Amazon.ca it must be free. Nope. $2.98. No problem, that isn’t a huge amount to pay. So I ordered it as well as T-2 on Blu-Ray.

So last week I go to check the order, T-2 is in stock, but BHD is still not. I check the website, Kanata has it in stock, the other stores do not. No problem, I wait patiently.

This week I check, all stores have it in stock, online shopping still marked as not in stock. Hmmm… not only that but the price has increased to $28.99. I start to check other stores in Ontario and other provinces. They all have it in stock!

I start to get angry, as only someone as anal retentive as myself can. I email customer service. They respond:

Currently, Black Hawk Down (Bilingual) (2001) (Blu-ray) is on special order at our central warehouse. As our store inventory is separate from the inventory at our web store, sometimes a product may be in stock in your local Best Buy Canada retail store, and out of stock on our web store, or vice versa. We understand your frustration, and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

This doesn’t sound right to me, so I ask about converting the order to a store pick-up, since its now in stock. The response:

Once an order is placed for shipment, it cannot be changed to in-store pickup. For an in-store pickup, the product must be in-stock and available in the retail store at the time the order was placed. If you place an in-store pickup order now for this product, it will not be for the sale price. We do not match prices on any past sales, however, the price on your online order number 7073635 will remain at the discounted price when it ships.

I get ever more angry. I question whether it will ship, and point out that I have had other bad experiences, including waiting 3 months for a DVD to ship. I mention that I believe that they are holding up the online orders in hopes that customers who purchased the item at the lower price would get frustrated and cancel their orders. This is not what I believe, but I figured it was the best way to get someone with more authority into the situation.

Cory is replaced with Kris:

We apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced and we thank you for your e-mail.

The item in question, Black Hawk Down on Blu-ray DVD, is currently Out of Stock. We are awaiting a shipment of this item from the manufacturer, once we’ve received this shipment your item will be shipped.

Delivery is subject to warehouse availability. Out of stock items will be shipped as soon as possible, upon arrival from the manufacturer/publisher. Please take shipping time into consideration.

For more information please view the following:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/helpsection/EN/online_policies.asp?onlinepoliciesID=1&logon=&langid=EN#delivery

At this point I angrily point out that I am taking availability into account. The exact item is available at every single store in Canada and it should not be a problem to either have one shipped to me, or made available for me to pick it up. I suspect that they can not accommodate this as the online store is operated separately from the bricks and mortar locations. Regardless the fact that their ordering service would let things get into such a situation is simply appalling. I will keep pursuing this to see if I can get something out of the situation. Regardless, I would sincerely advise against shopping at BestBuy.ca

 

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life, Technology No Comments » February 2008

WalMart Killed HD-DVD?

Days after Walmart announced that it would prefer if HD-DVD didn’t exist. HD-DVD is officially dead. Toshiba has announced that it will discontinue the HD-DVD format. For -somewhat- proud Blu-Ray owners like myself, this hopefully means that the cost of movies and accessories et al. will continue to drop, as well the availability of movies should increase as well.

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So now the questions for HD-DVD owners are:

Question: What should you do if you own an HD-DVD player?

Answer: Punch whoever told you to buy it.

Question: What should I do with my HD-DVD player?

Answer: Since it has no value, I say keep it. You can build a cheap library for it as prices crash. Of course this precludes you from being able to play the movies at your friends house since they will inevitably own a BD player.

Question: Should I run out and buy a Blu-Ray player?

Answer: Probably not. Prices should drop immensely in the next few months.

Question: Is this all WalMart’s fault?

Answer: No! They just confirmed what you should have figured out in the first place.

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The questions for Blu-Ray owners are no more complicated then ever before:

Question: Did I just win?

Answer: Yes and no. You certainly picked the right player, but direct downloads to set top boxes will be just around the corner. Your BD player may be obsolete before its time.

Question: If this direct download comes to be, should I make sure that my home theatre is on my network?

Answer: Yes.

Question: I can still make fun of people who bought HD-DVD right?

Answer: Yes you can, and you absolutely should.

Question: When will the movies that are only on HD-DVD be made available on BD?

Answer: My best guess -which probably isn’t any better than yours- is that the forfeit by HD-DVD will absolve Universal and Paramount from their contracts. It will take a few months for the movies to become available on Blu-Ray. At the latest I would expect to see Universal and Paramount movies at the end of the summer movie season.

Question: Should I throw a victory party?

Answer: Yes. You should invite all your HD-DVD friends over and make them watch Crank and Shoot’em Up repeatedly.

 

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Technology 2 Comments » February 2008

Forget A Nail In The Coffin…

Now they are just peeing on it…

Walmart drops HD DVD

You know, I am starting to think that over the next 3-4 months people will be unloading all things HD DVD for all they are worth. This may be a chance to pick up an HD DVD player and about 50 movies for $20 (total, not each). So if you can stand having two players you can probably increase the size of your library immensely on the cheap.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything 1 Comment » February 2008

FedEx added to the LIST!

Morons!

Complete and utter MORONS!

I ordered some stuff off of eBay from a guy in Toronto, not hugely expensive stuff,  so I really didn’t expect him to ship FedEx. I had it sent to the house as I expected it to be regular ExpressPost. Anyway, yesterday I got an email with FedEx tracking. I checked it out and saw yesterday morning that a delivery attempt had failed -I wasn’t home to sign. I phoned FedEx and asked when the package would be back at the depot. They unfortunately could not tell me, but said that it would be close to 7pm that evening.

That was a little late for me on Valentine’s Day so I requested that they not make a delivery attempt the next day, and that I would pick it up during the day -As I work about 5 minutes from the depot. About 30 minutes ago, I was about to go pick up the package, but I decided to check the tracking again, and make sure that it is still at the depot. ITS NOT! Its on the truck for delivery. I phoned -absolutely furious- to have them tell me, that it isn’t their job to leave it at the depot, that it is their job to deliver it. I told them that I would not be at that location during the day -EVER!- and asked what would happen if they couldn’t deliver it. They told me it would be sent back to the shipper. Which leaves them as completely incapable of doing their job! FedEx is on the list.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life No Comments » February 2008

Enjoying Others’ Stupidity

One of my guilty pleasures is to go to Amazon.com and start browsing movies or books that I have really enjoyed. Then I got to the 1/5 star reviews and read people shitting all over them. It is quite entertaining to see what some moron who thought that Independence Day was the best movie ever made thought of A History of Violence.

After a while of doing this I am starting to realize that you may be able to tell more about a movie from reading the 1/5 then from reading the 5/5. Real morons seem to be able to out themselves pretty quickly when their medium is the written word. It is quite amazing really, but it seems that stupidity is doubled when they put pen to paper, and it only goes up from there when the internet is involved. Of course this does assume that I will enjoy movies that idiots hate.

Oh well, its always entertaining seeing people continually misspell the most simple words. Once again the internet does seem to bring out all the crazies, that must be why I’m writing this blog.

 

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life, Technology 1 Comment » February 2008

Victory Is Mine!

Got my second Enbridge bill last night. $240.74. With the equal billing my credit after paying would be: $210.41.

Gah. Morons.

So I called this morning and this time actually talked to someone moderately useful. He lowered my equal billing gas charge from $210 a month to $85. My monthly bills are now $109.49. Although I still think I may be building up a large credit as the weather gets warmer for the next month.

I talked to a few people at Richcraft and apparently lots of new customers are having the same problem. When I talked to the guy at Enbridge he actually asked me if the house was vacant. Very funny and pretty unbelievable.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life No Comments » February 2008

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