what a bargain wednesday!

first off, i have to start with a disclaimer…

(shane, this is not me making fun of you – i love the ginormous tv and all the ufc magic it brings into my life…)

…okay, moving on.

i knew somebody had to benefit from the obamaconomy and i think i’ve figured out who – people with “e-z credit terms and no credit check required!”. seriously. as mentioned in the disclaimer, shane bought his tv this way and said he probably paid “double what it was worth when all was said and done…”. i always doubted him, ’cause i have no idea what it’s worth – but when his mom bought a dell lcd monitor i was selling to customers for $175 at the time for around $300 after finance charges i started to think MAYBE he wasn’t bullshitting.

then i heard a commercial recently…

“do you have bad credit? been laid off recently? well, if you can afford $29 a week you can have a brand new dell or hp computer…get a computer while HELPING your credit score!”

sounds like a plan, right? who can’t afford $29 a week? hell, i’m on unemployment and even i can afford that! the commercial is for real – it is only $29 a week (which is $115 a month, or $1,380 for the year you pay it out) for a pc that probably goes for around $700 online IF that, and they get a better price ’cause these people buy in bulk and pass the gouging on to you!

what a bargain!

i recently got a flier for a new “e-z credit rent-to-own” place opening in san marcos. furniture and electronics and appliance – oh my! all with “doorbuster pricing”. since i don’t know the price of most of the crap they sell, i would have no idea i was getting ripped – until i saw the “wii game console” on the back of the flyer. i know this one ’cause when they were hella scarce i saw friends that would find ’em, pick up two or three, and then flip the $300 machines for $500 on craig’s list for people who wanted to make up for long work hours away from their kids with pricey xmas gifts…

…they should have skipped craig’s and offered “e-z financing”.

i’ll say this, the new place (easy home) has got some balls. they not only put the weekly payments, and for how many weeks, but how much you end up paying IN THE AD, and it was the wii that made me pop them. the $300 game console they say NORMALLY goes for $20 per week (they don’t say for how many weeks), but they have “doorbuster specials” where it’s only TEN bucks a week…for seventy-eight weeks. a total of $780, or more than DOUBLE the retail price…

…and they say the mafia isn’t around anymore. bullshit. they now just have “e-z financing”.

(i think i’ve mentioned this before, from when i saw a 42″ LCD Philips that was $1498 at aaron’s, but if i paid all at once i’d get it for $1200, only for me to find out it was only $899 at wal-mart – if i had paid it out per month it would have been closer to $2,000)

let’s move on…

…another rip, for my money (literally) is the new “video memberships” places like blockbuster have. friends have that one and seem to like it, but we here in lockhart ran blockbuster out of town in favor of movie gallery, who are now dying due to the netflix rush here. now we get THERE plan, which was clearly arranged by the federal government, or the people that run county fairs.

yeah, you know the ones…

the ones where that “exchange cash for beer” equation is TOO simple, so they add a step – you exchange your cash for tickets, then exchange your tickets for beer. the rationale being you’ll get home and realize you still have the odd ticket or two, and they get to keep the money without giving up the beer…

…that’s why you try to avoid paying the hooker in advance. but perhaps i’ve said too much.

any who, so you pay a monthly fee, which gets you points. on the silver ($8), gold ($15), and platinum ($25) plans you get a buck a point, and then each point can be redeemed towards a rental, which oddly enough appear to be the same amount of points on a membership as they are bucks out of my pocket when i just walk in…but now they are GUARANTEED to get this much out of you, every month, until the day you die. on the upside for you, if you DON’T use all your points in a month, they roll over – the downside is you are GUARANTEED to pay this every month. oh, and if you do these you are limited to how many movies / games you can have at once. shitty weather but your only a silver member? tough shit, you can only have one out at once.

i can have as many out at once as i want since i’m membership-free and all. but i have a business plan here…

if you’re willing to drop “diamond-level” money you can have as many movies out as you want with no due dates and no late fees for $40 a month. i want to get the long version of the form and see what the limits are – there has to be some SOMEWHERE…and if not, i have a plan.

i’m going to get a diamond membership and empty out the entire store to my house…hey, if i can have as many as i want, for as long as i want, what’s the problem? i’ll then turn around and rent all titles for $1 a day to other people – and i’ll never have to work again!

what a country!