The rookery and crookery of certain markets. My top three:
1. Glasses. Frames range from $6 at Zenni Optical to $300+ at your local retail optometrist. The quality is identical.
2. Printer cartridges. There’s the junk for $30 and the real OEM stuff for $200. But the real stuff is usually discounted online. And the junk is often not junk. Yesterday a reader wrote
Harry I’ve been using ColorTonerExpert.com for the last couple of years for my laser color HP CM2320, works fine. Amazon HP OEM is $417 for a set HP OEM 3 color & 1 Black toner or triple the $139.50 from ColorTonerExpert. They also have sales that discount toner for less. The rare times I print photo’s I go to CVS since they look like crap on my HP printer – not sure if its the toner or the printer but outside of photo’s the toner works fine. Not worth paying triple for the rare times I need some photo’s.
3. Hearing aids. At a weekend party, two friends proudly showed off their $6,000 hearing aids. My $300 iPhone contains more electronics. What do I know? Hearing aids must really be ovepriced. My local hearing center just offered me a $1,000 discount on the purchase of a pair.
Then there are bank fees, telecom cable and phone company fees, inactivity fees…. the world has gone nuts on “fees.” Not to mention flat out wrong bills. My cable company promised an item for free. Then charged for it. Why? Because they know most of their customers can’t stand speaking to their “customer service departments.”
Jon Corzine’s MF Global highlights Wall Street basic dishonesty. Items:
+ A fellow who runs a brokerage/clearing house flat out lied to me two days ago. He said he would return my share certificates by Fedex that day. When I didn’t get them, he said he hadn’t promised to send them.
+ A fellow called Yves Smith wrote a a piece on Naked Capitalism “Yes, Virginia, Brokerage Firms Keeping Client Ripoff Provisions in Customer Agreements in the Wake of MF Global” He reports that reader Don H has sent evidence that the banks are keeping their rights to misuse customers firmly in place in the wake of MF Global:
Just got a 20 page `client agreement’ from from Wells Fargo for a security account which contains some amazing (to me) stuff.
It starts:
“This is your Client Agreement. It includes the terms and conditions and is the contract that controls your securities accounts.”
Later:
“Each account opened by you is a margin brokerage securities account, unless otherwise prohibited by applicable law or.” (so one can opt out but has to make a special request to set up a cash account. I wonder how many people who never deal in futures or short selling will realize they have a margin account?)
Later:
“We may, at our sole discretion and without prior notice to you, prohibit or restrict your ability to trade securities and/or other property.” (They can shut you out of the market at their whim)
Later:
“We may at any time and without giving you prior notice, use and/or transfer any or all securities and/or other property in any Account in which you have an interest, without regard to us having made any advances in connection with such securities and/or other property” (They can “MF Global” account holders without any further ado.)
You can see the relevant sections for yourself: Wells Fargo Client Agreement.
Moves:
1. If you don’t borrow or sell short, change your brokerage account to a cash account.
2. Don’t leave much money in any one brokerage account. You and I have no way of predicting the next MF Global. But we do know there will be one. And it will hurt innocent clients — just as MF Global has done. I asked my friend this morning if he had gotten all his money back from MF Global (he had a trading account)? He replied, “no. It looks like I have about 70% returned to me and I am in the process of filling out claim forms for the balance.”
It’s a new world. You have to file claims to get your very own money back.
I used to believe that everyone was honest and I acted on that belief. It worked for me for years. But no longer. I now work on the theory that most people are dishonest. haven’t been surprised.
Am I wrong?
I love my iPhone 4. But I keep forgetting to turn the speaker on after the theater.Then I miss calls the next day. Dumb me.
The new Apple software (available free to all of us) lets you use the + volume button to take a picture. It’s the new shutter button. Neat.
Cheap, but good earphones. Nice comfortable, cool looking headphones. Are they better than ones costing $300? Probably not. But can I hear the difference? Probably not.
At$37.50, they seem to be a bargain of sorts. Click here.
If you’d like something smaller. These are called Duck Ear Buds.
They cost $11.50 and are remarkably comfortable, stay in your ears and deliver actually great sound. They’re much better than the ones that comes with Apple products. Duck Ear Buds are a fun gift. Click here.
Rick Santorum has some seriously strange views. The Economist writes about them:
+ To Mr Santorum the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2003 that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional was a bad mistake: this was a slippery slope that would establish a right to bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery-“anything”.
+ As president, he said more recently, he would at last address “the dangers of contraception in this country”, because contraception is a “licence to do things in a sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be”.
Fortunately he has no chance of being elected president. I found it mindblowing that that someone allegedly intelligent would hold these views in 2011. There’s more. Read the fascinating piece here.
Fun stylish movie. Worth seeing.
Hans, the gold German tourist visits Paris
Hans, a middle-aged German tourist on his first visit to Paris, France finds the red light district and enters a large brothel. The madam asks him to be seated and sends over a young lady to entertain him.
They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear and she gasps and runs away! Seeing this, the madam sends over a more experienced lady to entertain the gentleman.
They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear, and she too screams, “No!” and walks quickly away.
The madam is surprised that this ordinary looking man has asked for something so outrageous that her two girls will have nothing to do with him. She decides that only her most experienced lady, Lola, will do. Lola has never said no, and it’s not likely anything would surprise her. So the madam sends her over to Hans. The sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear and she screams, “NO WAY, BUDDY!” and smacks him as hard as she can and leaves.
Madam is by now absolutely intrigued, having seen nothing like this in all her years of operating a brothel. She hasn’t done the bedroom work herself for a long time, but she’s sure she has said yes to everything a man could possibly ask for. She just has to find out what this man wants that has made her girls so angry. Besides she sees a chance to teach her employees a lesson.
So she goes over to Hans and says that she’s the best in the house and is available. She sits and talks with him. They frolic, giggle, drink and then she sits in his lap.
Hans leans forwards and whispers in her ear, “Can I pay in Euros?”
Sex in Afghanistan
A new RAF Wingco was assigned to an outfit in a remote post in the Afghan Desert.
During his first inspection of the outfit, he noticed a camel hitched up behind the mess tent.
He asked the Sergeant why the camel was kept there.
The nervous sergeant said, ‘Sir, as you know, there are 250 men here on the post and no women. Sometimes the men have urges. That’s why we have Molly The Camel”.
The Wingco said, ‘I can’t say that I condone this, but I can understand about the ‘urges’, so the camel can stay.’
About a month later, the Wingco starts having his own ‘urges’. Crazed with passion, he asked the Sergeant to bring the camel to his tent.
Putting a ladder behind the camel, the Wingco stands on the ladder, pulls his pants down and has wild and insane sex with the camel.
When he’s done, he asked the Sergeant, ‘Is that how the men do it?’
‘No sir. They usually just ride the camel into town. That’s where the girls are.”
Harry Newton who just read that “the political candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.”
OEM ink vs. Refills. My 5 year old HP died just after installing a couple of refilled (from Costco) cartridges. (One of those colors won't recognize new cartridges, including OEM, and so the printer will not print). Coincidence or damage from refill? Who knows!
Several years ago Harry, my wife mentioned to our doctor that she thought I was getting hard of hearing. He checked me out and responded there was nothing wrong with my hearing to suggest to Lorette that she “speak-up”. You might try that on Susan if you dare…
Harry, you're doing a nice job vetting Rick Santorum. Now tell us all again just why it was you voted for Obama. Funny how these “up town” New Yorkers go around patting themselves on the back believing they have some blessed extreme intelligence. When quietly alls they do is complain about their taxes going up. Big NYC liberals like Harry wouldn't even vote Mike Bloomberg into the Mayors office with a “D” next to his name…..they all remember the “Dinkins years”……….hypocrites to the left of me, hypocrites to the right of me……gee I must be in NYC. Yea Harry, Rick Santorum surly sounds like a real Nazi without a doubt……
Read you everyday, great stuff. Do you know how things work when a broker goes bust, such as Lehman. Do you need to make a claim for your account & wait months , filling out endless forms or is it a simple process. Somehow I doubt it's simple. I don't like having too many accounts, it just gets to be too much to keep track of, but if that's what it takes then so be it.
Harry-
To see just how meaningless our political auctions are, please read Matt Taibbi's piece “Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins.” http://www.rollingstone.com/po…
This gives new meaning to the phrase “Totally F*cked.”
All this nonsense about social issues is just a ruse to keep us from discussing the real issues. While the power elite is stealing $billions, the peons are discussing whether there should be same sex marriage! The “election” process is all pro-wrestling…. full of sound and fury…. signifying nothing. I'm reminded of Noam Chomsky's quote: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Our entire political system needs to be overhauled. For starters we need a “none of the above” option on our ballots. Then we need to have candidates who will talk about getting money out of politics, ending our imperialistic wars, getting rid of unfair trade policies that are extracting money out of our country, and changing our loophole ridden tax system to one that is more fair. I'm not holding my breath, but until then, I wouldn't waste my time voting.
When “the political candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.”, they're not elections, they're auctions.
Harry you are correct, another MF Global will happen again, we just don't know who or when. The diversification of funds among many banks/brokers may be the only safety we have. I got 71% of my MF Global balance back last week, quietly transfered to the new broker they set up for me, no notice- I just checked my balance daily. If I had closed out my account with the 'new broker' when the Dec. options expired I wonder how or IF I would have been notified ???? Hearing Aids are the biggest rip off on the market.
Sorry you are offended by Mr. Santorum's traditional PERSONAL beliefs on the sanctity of marriage and his pro-life views. Yes, we are much better off with a marxist as president who on a daily basis spits on the Constitution and our American values.
Devilznj,
I am a Republican and I have to agree with Harry on his take of Santorum. As a Republican, my biggest fear is that an extreme group has grabbed the microphone and espouses their views as if it is every Republican's view. It's not. And honestly, I am glad that Santorum or Gingrich or Bachman or whomever lets the public know their position. It makes my choice much easier. Pandering to a small base is hypocritical. Before you get your panties in a wad with my statement, I think Obama is in over his head and has conducted himself in much of the same fashion. He has pandered to a narrow base of his party and the country is suffering from it as a result. It is probably better to read the camel joke and chuckle than worry about politics on Friday.
Interesting new attack angle against our President… “he's in over his head”. Thanks for the heads up!
Kudos to your side for staying on-message with your plans to “break his Presidency”.
This is the most middle-class, temperate President since Eisenhower, Ford, and Bush I. Obama reminds me of decent Republican Americans like Kassebaum, Heinz, and Bob Dole.
It wasn't until 2004 that I actually registered so I could vote for Kerry in order to oppose the “in over his head” Bush with his 2 wars. (I am so glad he lost knowing what we now know about Mr. Edwards.)
Getting back to the present: Thanks to Obama, we as a nation have now risen back from negative territory back up to zero. The next five years require his continued leadership to get back to the growth of the Clinton years.
Please put down the kool-aid Mr. Guest and back away from the keyboard. Obama is a failure. His policies are holding this country back from real economic growth and job creation.
Harry,
You were asking readers for more short ideas a few days ago. Gamestop might be a good short idea. They are selling fewer video games for portable systems, since more people have smartphones with cheaper or free games these days. Gamestop also generates good margins selling used video games, but Amazon has been gaining share in the video game resale market. Finally, the same way music and books are being downloaded, more video games will be downloaded in the future so there will be less need to buy physical games at Gamestop.
Marc
Really interesting idea. I'll check… Thank you.
Harry on ColorTonerExpert.com they are selling their own toner for $139.50 for the set of four, it is not HP OEM. Just wanted to clarify since my comment yesterday that you posted today may not have been clear. Thanks.