tips
If You Buy A Car (Okay, Truck) In Texas, Make Sure You Don't Pay The Inventory Tax
Texas levies an inventory tax of .02% on the retail value of all products in a company’s inventory each year, but lots of car dealerships try to sneak the fee over to the consumer. Even worse, they do it year-round.
AT&T To Charge $5 For Payments Over The Phone In May
An anonymous AT&T employee who says to call him “Vernon” wrote in to tell us that starting next Tuesday, March 11th, some customers in the Southeast who call in to make a payment will be charged $5, with the fee going nationwide by May. He writes, “I feel this is taking advantage of our customers’ trust, because even when we put it on all of their bills, and let people know, there will be tons of reps that won’t let the customer know they’re being charged for taking their payment.”
50 Ways To Get Through Phone Systems
VOIP-News has a list of 50 ways to get through to a real, live, not necessarily well-trained CSR on phone systems. We’re posting this not just because their first tip is “Read the Consumerist,” but because there are some really good ideas here, like hitting up EDGAR to search for contact info on public companies.
Johnny Rockets Automatically Adds 15% Gratuity To Takeout Orders
She writes:
When I went to pay for the order, I noticed a gratuity already included on the bill. I told the waiter, “this is take out gratuity is not included.”
Court Rules "World Yacht" Can Be Sued For Not Distributing Gratuities To Its Servers
“Hold on,” you say to yourself—”If it’s a gratuity, doesn’t that by definition mean it goes to the wait staff?” Not if you’re a server for World Yacht, a “luxury dining fleet” in Manhattan that will now be sued by its employees for slapping automatic gratuities on diners’ bills, then keeping the extra money for itself. New York labor laws require “employers to pass on to workers any payments that customers understand to be tips,” but World Yacht argued that the banquet industry was exempt, and its servers should get nothing. Thanks to last week’s ruling, the employees can move forward with their suit.
36 Confessions Of A WaMu Banker
– About the WaMu Free Checking, yes it is a different “free” checking account. We just came out with the “WaMu” part about a couple of years ago, so if you have any “free” checking account older than that I suggest you change it to the newer one.
7 Lies You'll Hear From Salesmen At Electronics Stores
Future Shop is a Canadian consumer electronics retail chain. Charlie used to work there, and has now passed along the 7 most common lies he heard salesmen use on unsuspecting customers. Whether you have a Future Shop in your area or not, you’ll find these lies familiar.
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Katie says her Sidekick wasn’t connecting to the network for the past day or so, so she “called T-Mobile and there’s an outage in NYC affecting all gprs-using devices (sidekicks, blackberries, etc).” They gave her a $5 credit for compensation, so if you’re in a similar situation you might want to call T-Mobile to complain.
Subprime Meltdown Makes Foreclosure Websites Great Places To Shop
If you’re ready to buy a home and don’t mind a little ghoulish bargain-hunting, now is a great time to hit the various foreclosure sites online, reports Reuters.
Pick Up Some Haggling Tips At HowToHaggle.com
HowToHaggle.com is a short, easy-to-skim website devoted exclusively to the concept of haggling. It’s not the world’s most extensive resource, but the tips page lists 15 very good things to keep in mind the next time you want to score a better deal on a product.
Don't Want RFID On Your Plastic? Call Your Credit Card Company
There’s all sorts of advice online about how to disable RFID chips and tags, and now that they’re starting to show up uninvited on credit cards, you might be tempted to try some of those tactics. But as a reader found out, many credit card issuers will simply swap out your newfangled RFID-enabled card for a traditional one if you just ask.
Have A Best Buy Card? Check Your Local Store Before Using It Online
Matt writes in with a tip if you’re unlucky enough to have a Best Buy credit card and plan on using it any time soon: check whether the brick and mortar store near you has any special promotions running first. If so, buy the item from their store instead of online or you’ll be bound by Best Buy’s 90 days same-as-cash terms regardless of whether or not the store is offering a better deal.
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Walgreens has a printable online coupon for $5 off a purchase of $20 or more, good for tomorrow only. (Thanks to Mike!)
Supermarket Trick: Wait One Month Before Using Coupons
Trent at the Simple Dollar describes the “one month coupon strategy”—a cool trick that lets you line up coupons with in-store sales for massive discounts. Set aside grocery coupons for a month, then go through and select the ones you’re interested in. Bring them to the store and you’ll find that many of them are for products that are now on sale. On Trent’s last visit to the supermarket, approximately 40% of the coupons matched on-sale products—in the most extreme example, he was able to purchase some ice cream for 19 cents.
Self-Employed? Here's How To Do Your Taxes
Being self-employed can be a source of personal satisfaction, but also headache, especially when it comes to doing one’s taxes. Fortunately, there’s an extremely lucid step-by-step guide posted over at E-How. They’ll walk you through everything you need to do, from determining your status, to your expenses and deductions. The guide points out important things to remember, like the extreme importance of using exact numbers when claiming deductions. Rounded numbers might be easier to add, but they’re also a red flag to IRS auditors (if you learn nothing else from Girls Gone Wild, let it be this).
How To Buy A New Mattress
Elizabeth Mayhew of the Today Show gives a primer on mattress shopping, including the basics on types of mattresses, cost differences, what to look for, and when to replace your old one. “If you are a couple, shop together and if possible bring your pillows with you. Make sure you lie on a mattress for at least 10 minutes in your normal sleep position. Cuddle on it, and engage in light foreplay through your street clothes.” Okay, we made up that last sentence.
Get Basic Tax Info With Publication 17
Are you totally clueless about your taxes? Don’t worry, the government is here to help! The IRS puts out a 300-page document called Publication 17. It can serve as a getting started guide for doing your taxes and answer questions like what to do when you have a baby, retire, or sell stock. Pub 17 also covers some of the new changes in store for 2008, like the expiring capital gains tax, IRA deduction increases, changes to child’s investment income, and ever so much more. No, you don’t have to read the whole darn thing. It’s a PDF so you can search for specific keywords and phrases. If you’re doing your taxes yourself and have some basic questions you need answering, Pub 17 is a good place to start.
