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  • Martin Luther King Day Links

    • Life Size Master Chief

  • Interest Rates on Purchases

    Today, somehow, we got on the conversation of the BowFlex.  Don’t ask how, we somehow got to it by means of Chuck Norris.  Anyways, a guy at work here saw an infomercial one night about the new BowFlex Revolution.  Anyways, I was looking at them and noticed the “low low monthly payments”.  However, after seeing the total cost, it seemed awfully strange.

    Digging a little deeper revealed that in addition to $2500, you have to spend $200 to have it shipped to you.  Ok, so total is up to $2700, but we’re only paying $37 a month.  A little math later, we get that annual payment is $444.  However, Bowflex isn’t nice enough to give it to us for no interest penalty, oh no.  Instead, they give us an awesome 12 month fixed rate promotion of 16.99%.  Such a deal.  So, the first year’s interest is $458.73.  So, by paying the minimum monthly payment, you actually don’t make back the interest.  You’re, in fact, in the hole the initial purchase plus $14.73, and you’re a year into it, and I’m sure not using the damn thing anymore.

    Let’s fast forward to the end of year two.  You’ve payed BowFlex $888. So, if this was an interest free purchase, you would still owe $1812, which isn’t too bad.  But now you figure in the first years interest, which is the above $458.73, plus the second years interest (based on $2714.73 and a standard rate of 21.8%), which is $591.81.  All the sudden, you’re in the hole the initial purchase plus $162.54.  Ok, but lets say you forgot to make a payment, or didn’t pay the “low low low monthly price” one month.  That means your interest rate jumps to 25.8% (WOW!), so now you’re in the hole the initial purchase plus $271.13. 

    As you can see, it just spirals out of control, since you have never actually paid back any of the interest AND take a chunk out of the principle.  With these interest rates and the required low monthly payment, you can never actually pay it off.  I guess that’s one way to make money, eh? 

    Now, I’m not saying this is the company’s fault, far from it.  And yes, I know my math isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough based on the amount of interest and the monthly payments.  It just shows you how easily it is to get suckered into a “deal”.

  • Links 1/13

    Not many exciting links today.  Have fun with the one 🙂

    • FCC to auction off inflight airwaves
    • Heiny Light
    • Wow, just wow.

  • Downtime Yesterday

    So, there were some technical difficulties yesterday.  And by technical difficulties, I mean that I killed the router.  Basically what happened was I attempted to fix my router problem by following the “Linksys WRT54G + Bittorrent Problems?” link from yesterday.  Note to anyone who’s attempting to do this; do not attempt this fix while you are at work on the WAN side of the router.  Yes, I know it wasn’t my brightest moment, but it should have worked fine.

    It turns out that it had worked fine, but upon reboot, it didn’t pick up an IP address from Comcast, so it just sat there, all stupid like.

    Anyways, the fix appeared to work, but not for long.  The same problems come right back.  I think I know what the problem may be now, so I’m going to attempt to fix it again tonight.

  • Links 1/12

  • Links 1/11

  • Link Sharing

    As you can see from the article below, I’m trying something new.  Instead of spamming everyone via instant messages, I thought I’d consolidate into one place.  No idea how well it will work, but we’ll see.

  • Links for 1/10

    Today, unlike yesterday (too bad I didn’t start this yesterday) with the opening of the Detroit Auto Show, today hasn’t been filled with too many fun links.  However, I’ll keep this updated throughout the day in case I find more.

  • More Gaming

    As you can see from my gamertag below, I’ve definitely been playing with the Xbox360 more and more.  Unfortunately, that’s only really been from two games, PGR3 and CoD2.  I haven’t even started in on NFS:MW, which looks crazy fun from what I’ve seen Aaron play.  It’s crazy, there are days that I really want to just sit down and play, but when I actually can, there really isn’t enough time.  Between work, working out, Erin, and Everything Else™, I can’t say I have that much time to just play.  However, I am on the last section of CoD2, which means that if I ever finish it, my gamerscore should increase quite a bit (I’m playing it on Veteran, the hardest difficulty, the first time through).  Plus I just purchased a 12 (+ 1) month subscription to Live!, so I can play online, which when I actually did it in PGR3, was quite fun.  And then there’s more cool games that are coming out, like Alan Wake, Burnout Revenge (granted it is just a re-release), and others.

    Oh yeah, and the D-Day invasion on Veteran mode, is, well, frickin’ hard.

  • Emigrant Direct

    Currently, I use ING for my savings account.  Their interest rates are at 3.8%, but I’ve always been tempted to sign up with Emigrant Direct, since their rates are always higher (currently 4%).  A month ago, I decided to take the plunge and sign up.

    To begin with, their signup is a lot more complicated with ING.  Good or bad, it just takes a lot longer to actually start making money.  Anyways, you can open an account with no initial deposit.  Being that you can’t demo the system before you sign up, I figured this would be a good way to make sure I actually liked what they do, and that I wasn’t jumping into something I didn’t want to be in. 

    After signing up, you have to attach it to an account so you can get money in and out, and they can authorize the account.  Not a problem.  Since I was going to transfer money out of my ING account to begin with, I put in the account and routing details for it.  I then waited 3 or 4 days until two deposits were done, and then I signed back in to Emigrant to authorize the account.  Unfortunately, that’s not the last step.  Turns out to be able to sign into the account online, you need to wait for your first billing statement to arrive.

    So, I wait.

    On the 22nd or so, I finally get a statement from them, so I proceed to sign in.  I get a strange error message while signing in, but figure it’s just a glitch since it refreshed on its own, and was gone.  So, after I finally get signed in, I get a “General Error” when I attempt to view my account.  They have a message center, so I fire off an email to figure out what’s going on.  The reply follows.

    Dear Customer,
    Thank you for your Inquiry.
    According to our records, your American Dream savings Account has been closed effective 12/15/2005 due to an initial deposit of “0.00”. After 10 business days of the account at a “0.00” balance, the account will be closed.
    However, In order to reopen the account please mail in a check to the following address.
    Mail in a check made out to EmigrantDirect for at least one dollar with your EmigrantDirect account number

    Please mail the check to the following address:
    EmigrantDirect
    ATTN: Communication Department
    13 Croton Avenue
    Ossining, New York 10562
    Thank you for banking with EmigrantDirect
    -Shahara H.

    Let’s point out what’s wrong with this email, shall we?

    1. My name is not “Customer.”  Is your system so archaic that you can’t retrieve my name from my login ID?
    2. How was I supposed to fund the account when it took > 10 days to receive my mailed bank statement?
    3. Why does your sign up process inform you that you don’t have to fund the account, when you, in actuality, do?

    Ok, so those last two weren’t actually part of the email, but it’s implied based on what was offered to me during signup.  And don’t you worry faithful readers, I emailed back Shahara and let her know how assinine this policy is.

    I haven’t yet sent off an check to them, because after looking over the interface, it leaves a lot to be desired.  I can’t even add additional accounts to automatically fund an account.  Or at least, I can’t do that from any of the menu’s I currently have available.  Maybe someone who has a functioning account can instill a little bit more confidence, but as it stands, I think I may not do anything with Emigrant.