Showing Latest Comments
T-Mobile: Sorry You Lost Your Job And Had To Move, Here's Your $500 ETF Bill
"Phone manufacturers would sell phones through retailers and in much higher volume"
Highly doubtful. You think that, without the buying power of an AT&T working for you, prices would come down?
"You can buy a chinese copy of an Iphone for $55, can a real Iphone really cost more than maybe $80 to make in a factory in China? I don't think so."
I have one of those Chinese copies. Comparing it to an iPhone is like a bicycle held together with duct tape vs. a Porsche. The components are completely different - the components alone in an iPhone are ~$130-150. Apple certainly gets a great margin on it, but they don't sell them for any less in countries where you can easily buy unlocked phones (i.e. Europe and Asia). They charge $600+ for the iPhone because people will pay that much.
"Most smartphones made in factories in China, Korea or Mexico are highly inflated in price to keep the contracts and subsidies attractive."
If this were true, then, again, handsets would be much cheaper in places without subsidies, and they aren't.
"If there were no subsidies those phone manufacturers would make nice smartphones for $79 with no contracts. They would work on all carriers."
This Xmas, there will be the first decent smartphones with a wholesale price below $150. Still a long way to go to a retail price of $79. As for working on all carriers, not in the US at least, unless you want a phone the size of a brick that costs a fortune. Different network standards, different frequency bands. If you want a smartphone to work on all carriers in the US, you need it to work in the 700, 800, 850, 1800, 1900, 2100, and 2500 bands, and on CDMA, GSM, LTE, and WiMax. It would be like saying that every electric appliance needs to come with a plug that will fit every socket worldwide - you _could_ do it, but you'd end up with something that costs much more, and is incredibly ungainly.
Arkansas Court Tells Ticketmaster It Is Bound By Anti-Scalping Laws
It's ironic, since Ticketmaster would like to roll a lot of those fees into the price of the ticket (since the bulk of the fees go to the bands and venues), but in most cases the promoters won't let them, since it makes the tickets _look_ cheaper, and lets the bands blame Ticketmaster for the price, while hiding how much they're getting.
:Consumers seeking tickets to all sorts of events have become increasingly frustrated — and sometimes enraged — by ticket fees, which can add 30 or 40 percent to the cost of an order, as well as by the lack of other options for buying tickets. But while the brunt of that anger is usually directed at Ticketmaster, other players in the business, like theaters and promoters, collect, and depend on, their share of fees.
"John Scher, a veteran promoter in New York and New Jersey, called String Cheese Incident’s efforts “a righteous cause,” but added that in most cases the cost of booking quality acts was so high that promoters cannot afford to forgo their share of ticketing fees, known in the industry as rebates.
“The acts have gotten so greedy across the board, and have made the risk-reward so impossible, that the rebates are very much the lifeblood of promoters,” Mr. Scher said. (The band’s tour is not coming to the Northeast.)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/arts/music/string-cheese-incident-takes-on-ticketmaster.html
These Men Died For Your 3G Signal (And A Paycheck)
"Really? In the 1950s, there were hundreds of AAA rated companies in the United States. Now there are six."
Yup. The rest of the companies are either in businesses that the ratings agencies simply won't give AAA ratings to, or have realized that the incredibly low debt levels necessary to get a AAA rating require the company to have a much much higher cost of capital than it would need to. The difference in interest rate you have to pay between an AAA rating and a BBB rating (the lowest level of investment grade) is about 1%. For that difference, you can have twice the debt (much lower cost than equity) on your balance sheet.
"The longest I have ever been employed in a salaried job is 15 months."
Methinks this says a lot more about you than about the employment world.
Comcast Refuses To Believe I Didn't Open An Account When I Was 16 At A House I Didn't Live In
"Once again, this situation not only points out the level of incompetence at Comcast, but also highlights the problem with regional cable monopolies that virtually eliminate all consumer choice — and give cable/Internet providers with no competitive incentive to do their jobs properly."
Yup, since Dish, Directv, and telcos don't exist.
Bank Of America Apparently Doesn't Want Credit Card Customers Who Pay Their Cards Off
If you're a customer who pays off his credit cards every month, why do you care what the APR is?
The fact that you were asking that told them that you were considering a change in your behavior, and that's a risk factor (when somebody who's been paying off in full starts carrying a balance, even at 10%, never mind 24%, that's a sign that their finances have taken a turn for the worse).
Comcast To Remove 250GB Data Cap. Don't Celebrate Just Yet
Comcast was throttling you, but FiOS is too (they sell 50Mbps service, and 100Mbps in some markets). In both cases, you could have gone to higher speed plans, if you were willing to pay more.
Are You A Customer Service Saboteur? If So, What Kind?
In most states (although I think they still represent a minority of the population), unless you're a felon, mentally ill, etc., the gov't shall (i.e. must) issue you a permit to carry a loaded concealed handgun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States#Permitting_policies
78-Year-Old Woman Forced To Leave House She & Her Husband Built In 1956
So, what's the correct age for a debt to become uncollectable?
Also, if you think Bain Capital would have plastic flowers, you've clearly got no clue whatsoever.
78-Year-Old Woman Forced To Leave House She & Her Husband Built In 1956
"Actually, it has all the hallmarks of predatory lending. Take someone who is cash poor but has a ton of home equity, give them a loan that they can't possibly pay back, then foreclose and sell the house for a huge profit."
Huge profit? The lender will recoup what it's owed, but anything beyond that goes to the homeowner. This idea that lenders are foreclosing on $30k mortgages and then getting to keep $500k houses is just not true.
Comments from NeverLetMeDown
T-Mobile: Sorry You Lost Your Job And Had To Move, Here's Your $500 ETF Bill
I'm not anti-consumer, I'm pro-fairness. The OP signed up for T-Mobile service. She had at least 14 days to cancel, if the service wasn't up to her expectations. Her expectations changed, because she moved to a new location. T-Mobile didn't change, she did. What if she decided she wanted to build a Faraday cage around her home. Clearly, her phone wouldn't work. Would that be T-Mobile's responsibility?
"It's called Customer Relationship Management."
No, it's not. CRM is process and technology related to how you handle your customers. It can, and does, include (a) telling customers no, and (b) telling low value or negative value customers that you don't want their business any more. Clearly, it includes managing the risk of default (i.e. don't give somebody with terrible credit and a long criminal record a new iPhone on the hope that THIS TIME, they won't default on the contract), but that's only a tiny part of it.
Certainly, T-Mobile knows that a certain % of their customers won't fulfill their contracts. That's entirely different from saying that they are somehow obliged to just let them go and eating the loss. That's like arguing that, since a certain percentage of customers are likely to default on their mortgages, lenders should just shrug and not foreclose.