Chad has carried around a Leatherman Super Tool since 1996. It has proven useful many, many times since, but for the last year he carried it, it just wasn’t working correctly. He asked for and received a new one for Christmas from his wife. Hurray! After bonding with his new tool, he learned about the company’s 25-year warranty. 25 years? Why, his old one was only 16 years old when it went out of commission. He sent it along to see if it could be repaired. He was sad to learn that it couldn’t. [More]
Leatherman Can’t Repair Tool Under 25-Year Warranty, Replaces It Instead
By January 11, 2013
I Might Get My Craftsman String Trimmer Back Before It Snows
By August 20, 2012
Patrick didn’t say where in the country he lives, but in most of the United States, people don’t need string trimmers year-round. Their grass and weeds grow from maybe late spring to maybe early fall. He bought a new Craftsman string trimmer from Sears back in April, just in time for the plants to start growing. He had a problem with it about a month ago, so he brought it in to the store so Sears could make good on that two-year warranty it came with. That’s when he learned that thanks to the glacial speed of repairs, he’ll be lucky if he sees his string trimmer again before the end of the summer. [More]
Knife Printed With 'USA Quality Guarantee' Is, Of Course, Made In China
By December 14, 2011
Think quickly: if you saw the “USA Quality Guarantee” seal on a product you found in a store, where would you assume that it had been manufactured? If you guessed “China,” you’re an awfully cynical person. You are, however, correct.
Reader Stuart, who writes a blog about tools, noticed this little badge of dishonor on a knife for sale at Home Depot. If it’s not meant to make customers think that the knife was made in the USA, then are the words just for decoration?
Why Don't People Share Lawnmowers?
By May 3, 2011
Let us disrupt the otherwise normal bucolic sight of everyone in the neighborhood out on a warm afternoon, mowing away at their green lawns. Why does each house need to own their own lawnmower? At around $300 a pop for a new one, they’re not cheap, and households could cut costs drastically if they shared them, but negotiating that can lead to arguments over how much each borrower should chip in, if any, and when. So the Eschaton blog muses on this and wonders, why couldn’t there be a Zipcar for tools? Well there is! They’re called tool rental libraries. [More]
Find Your Stolen Camera By Searching Web For Uploaded Pictures From It
By April 28, 2011
The descriptively named stolencamerafinder.com helps you track down your stolen fancy digital camera. Just drag and drop photos from your camera before it was stolen onto the box on the website. The site then scans scraped databases for the EXIF data embedded in the picture to locate other photos encoded with your same serial number. If there’s a hit, that person might have your camera. [More]
Figure Out Your Scrap Gold Value With An Online Calculator
By December 21, 2010
Don’t rely on the buyer to tell you how much your gold is worth, that’s a ripe setup for getting a bad deal. Instead, know the melt value of your gold before you go into negotiations. To make that easier, GoldCalc is a two-step tool that lets you do exactly what its name sounds like. [More]
Find Foreclosures Using Google Maps
By December 13, 2010
You can check out foreclosures all over the US just by drilling down in Google Maps. [More]
Calculate How Many Days Of Work That New Shirt Will Cost You
By December 8, 2010
DaysToPay is a handy little site that quickly shows you how long you will have to work in order to buy something. Enter the cost and your hourly wage or yearly salary and it shows you just how much of your sweat is going into that new Xbox Kinect. [More]
I Can't Find My Phone Dials Your Cell For You
By October 29, 2010
Wallet, keys, check. Cellphone? Gah! Where did I put that darn thing? [More]
Pick A Bank That Won't Screw You
By October 18, 2010
Shopping for a bank but don’t want to get dinged with fees or unfair practices, but not totally sure you know what they all are? Those banks can be darn creative, after all. Here’s a great online guide that takes you step by step through all the practices you should watch out for. Complete the worksheet and you’ll have a good idea of whether you should stash your cash there or not. [More]
How Do Airlines Compare On Fees?
By September 27, 2010
It’s hard to keep track of all the extra fees airlines have invented to pad a ticket purchase, especially since they keep introducing new ones; USA TODAY says revenue from added fees have jumped nearly 16% from a year ago. The newspaper reviewed fees from 13 airlines in the U.S. and compiled this handy reference chart of current fee schedules, to make comparison shopping a little bit easier. As expected, Southwest continues to be one of the best values. [More]
Black & Decker Recalls 192,000 Orbit Sanders Over Unintentional Flying Objects
By September 9, 2010
Earlier today, Black & Decker and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a voluntary recall of 192,000 Black & Decker Random Orbit Sanders after several reports that the plastic disc that holds the sandpaper to the sander can fly off and hurt the hell out of you or anyone around you. [More]
DOT Updates 'Fly Rights' Airline Consumer Guide
By September 7, 2010
The Department of Transportation has updated its consumer guide to air travel, which provides a quick summary of what to look for when buying a ticket, and what protections you have during travel. It’s also a good starting point when you have an airline-related problem and need more information before deciding what to do next. [More]
Can A Pirate Ship Game Teach Kids About Money?
By August 23, 2010
Parsons design and technology thesis students came up with a pirate ship board game that has the twin goals of teaching personal finance to kids and not sucking. [More]
Use Toshl To Manually Track Your Expenses
By August 20, 2010
The Toshl app lets you swiftly input and track your spending. Just enter a price, tap a tag, and tap save. Blamo, done. [More]
Use "Remember The Milk" To Organize Your Bills
By August 19, 2010
Keeping track of what bills need to be paid when and how much can be a hassle. Here’s how you can use the long-time fave productivity and to-do list management tool “Remember The Milk” to simplify it. [More]
Amazon Offers To Connect With Your Facebook Account
By August 2, 2010
Remember Beacon? This is not Beacon, Amazon wants you to know. The retailer has launched a new program where you can connect your Amazon account to your Facebook account, but it promises it won’t broadcast your purchases or bug your friends. Instead, the connection seems designed to funnel all the likes and favorites on your Facebook account (and those of your friends as well) into Amazon’s giant brain, so it can refine its shopping recommendations. Oh, and it will remind you of upcoming birthdays. [More]
Force A Reality Check With This "Real Cost" Credit Card Tool
By July 19, 2010
The next time you want to splurge on some big ticket item, you might want to head over to The Real Damage first to see what it’s going to actually cost you in the long run. The free online tool looks at your current balances and interest rates, as well as your monthly payments, and then approximates how much extra you’ll pay in interest on your new purchase before you’re totally debt free. [More]
