The Amazon home page has somewhere around 16 different sales pitches, and more unnecessary graphics than a MySpace page. Here are 9 money-saving ways to shop the site without waiting for another customized ad to render.
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9 Better, Cheaper Ways To Search Amazon
By 12.6.07
1(877)FLYERS6 – Stranded Holiday Traveler Help Line
By 12.5.07
If you’re stranded or heavily delayed at the airport this holiday season, you may want to have 1(877)FLYERS6 saved in your cellphone contacts. That’s a special free flyer hotline set up by the Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights. They offer a variety of services, like emailing your family or business associates and let them know where you are, offering real-time weather and flight status information, and let you know about hotel or rental options, as well as help you deal with refund situations. If you’re stuck on the tarmac and not being let off the plane, they will pass the info on and try to get media out to the airport.
Find Out What Your IRS Refund Will Be
By 12.4.07
What’s your tax refund for 2007 going to look like? Go to this withholding calculator at the IRS website with your paycheck at your side, answer the questions, and they’ll give you a good estimate of what your refund will be. They will also give you suggestions for changing your withholdings.
Shop Online Safely With Temporary Credit Cards
By 11.30.07
Almost every time we write about fraud or identity theft, savvy readers will point out in the comments that many card companies offer temporary credit cards—virtual accounts tied to your real one that expire after one use, or a few days, or after a certain spending limit is reached. We thought it might be a good time to remind readers about these services, as well as password-protected and so-called “anonymous” credit cards.
Tape Customer Service Calls With RecordMyCalls.com
By 11.28.07
RecordMyCalls is a super-easy way to record your customer service calls. Just sign up, call their 1-800 number, then call the number on which you wish your call to be recorded. After the call is over, the recording is immediately available on the site for review, downloading, and sharing. The main drawback is that it will cost you a $4.95/month or $9.95/month subscription plan, with recording rates of 20 cents and 15 cents per minute, respectively. We personally prefer using Skype + HotRecorder but for lazy people or those with no technical aptitude or really need to record a call and are aware from their “base” computer, RecordMyCalls is a viable option.
Thinking About Financial Portfolios Makes Shoppers Spend More
By 11.26.07
Consumers can be cued to spend more through a series of simple “priming” questions. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research split subjects into two groups. One was asked a series of questions about the contents of their wallets: Did they have any library cards? Did they carry pictures or cash? How many other wallets did they own? The other was asked about their financial portfolio.
Save Up For Purchases Using Replacement-Planning
By 11.13.07
These days, when some people want to buy stuff, they whip out the plastic. For life’s emergencies, this is sometimes unavoidable (if you don’t have an emergency fund), but there’s some items you know will need to be replaced and you have a decent idea of when. In those cases, Bankrate writes, you can borrow a technique used by condo-associations called replacement planning. To wit:
How To Freeze Your Credit Report
By 11.6.07
Red Tape Chronicles has a good guide for how to set up a credit report freeze at each of the three major credit bureaus.
Get Free Long Distance And International Calls With Talkster
By 11.1.07
Talkster lets you make international and long-distance calls for free. The only catch is that it’s more complicated than making a regular phone call and you have to listen to a short advertisement.
How To Find The Cheapest Roaming Solution When Traveling Abroad
By 10.31.07
Having the ability to make calls all over the world is a pretty amazing communications milestone, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheap and easy. The Consumerist is filled with stories of poor fools who come back from parts unknown with thousand-dollar roaming bills—and it doesn’t just happen to clueless iPhone users. Here’s our attempt to help make some sense out of the mess.
The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back (Revised Edition)
By 10.30.07 — Updated: 8.14.13
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How To Extend Your Battery Life
By 10.30.07
Reader Don felt compelled to share this tips about proper love and care of your electronic items’ batteries so they last longer and you don’t have to buy more unnecessarily…
Live Without Credit Cards
By 10.27.07
The best way to escape from our mindless purchase economy is to ignore your credit cards in favor of pure, reliable cash. Credit cards undoubtedly have value – purchase protection, rewards, convenience – but only for consumers who use credit responsibly. No Credit Needed wrote a useful guide for anyone willing to live the credit-free life.
Quickly Find Good Deals On SlickDeals And FatWallet With WiredDeals
By 10.18.07
One of the sites I visit every time I scour for items for Morning Deals is WiredDeals, a free registration site that tries to aggregate the best deals from the SlickDeals and FatWallet forums.
6 Things To Know Before Getting Angry With Your Health Plan
By 10.16.07
The NYT read the Consumers Union’s, “A Consumer Guide to Handling Disputes With Your Employer or Private Health Plan,” and here’s their distillation of how you can avoid out of pocket expenses and frustration by making sure you know the following:
Painlessly Divorce Outlook And Your Crackberry
By 10.12.07
Mike Elgan describes how he was able to dump outlook, move all his data to online services, and can now use any phone he wants:
Validas Analyzes Your Cellphone Bill For Potential Savings
By 10.10.07
Validas is a new service that aims to help consumers save on their cellphone bills by analyzing their cellphone bills and providing suggestions about how they could adjust their plans and save money. To use it, you create an account, validate your email address, download your cellphone bill from your cell provider’s website, upload it to Validas for processing, then wait a few seconds for your report.
The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back
By 10.8.07
If you have a legitimate grievance with a company that they’re not helping you solve, here are 15 hand-picked articles of ours that will be your blueprint to kicking ass. They’re arranged in 3 escalating tiers, depending on how far you want-to/have-to take it. If you’re ready to stop getting mad and start getting results, check out the posts inside…
