consumerism
Is the recession making you sad? Then go hug a friend because your money doesn't care and can't make you happy, the
Dalai Lama reminded us yesterday. The exiled Tibetan leader said that if nothing else, the economic crisis is doing an excellent job showing people the limit of money.
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frugality
We're always telling people to save their money — but that's just because we're overcompensating for a society that spends too much. It is possible to be
too frugal and you risk regretting that you didn't have a little more fun while you had the chance.
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consumerism uber alles
Feeling down? Money might help, according to Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The Wharton
economists released a paper arguing that countries with higher gross domestic products have happier citizens. The study shatters the conventional wisdom known as the Easterlin Paradox, which holds that GDP and happiness are largely unrelated.
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happiness
Adam got two stale Mountain Dews from a vending machine, so he called
Pepsi to express his displeasure. Pepsi response made Adam so happy he wrote to us to express his joy. Did Pepsi do anything "above and beyond?" No, not really. They were simply nice to Adam, and did what they said they'd do.
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happiness
Over at Freakonomics they're swooning over Zappos.com's excellent customer service, and indeed the post reads like some sort of shopping fantasy:
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surveys
A survey of 10,000+ consumers ranked the best and worst shopping sites during the the 2006 holiday season.
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kitchenaid
Robin recently had a terrible experience with a broken Roomba and the unhelpful people at iRobot, so she was shocked and amazed by the helpful customer service of KitchenAid. From her email:
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readers
Reader John bought a Eureka vacuum cleaner from Bed Bath and Beyond in March. When the vacuum stopped working in August, John called Eureka. They asked that he get the vacuum repaired himself. John took said appliance to a local Brooklyn hole-in-the-wall repair place where it was "repaired" and by "repaired" we mean "stored for several days and returned." From John's email:
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lottery
Whenever anyone says that money can't buy
happiness, I immediately assume they secretly gamble and hypocritically buy up stacks of lottery tickets, hoping for that big score. They regularly use lingo like "quick pick" and "trifecta wheel."
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Consumerist
spending habits
happiness
