Consumer

I ordered from BicycleTrailers.com a Baby Jogger Tailwind trailer that I ended up returning. I ended up returning it mostly because it had no storage room at all. I’m toting my son in the trailer and he needs his lunch, sometimes a change of clothes, etc. And it’s nice to have that behind him where he can’t get at it. The trailer itself, while a bit on the heavy side, was extremely well built and had some very nice touches compared to our Burley LadyBug trailer. It seems likely that the Baby Jogger folks were aiming this at people who want to jog with young kids and that having no storage room was a feature, since the missing space gives a runner room for their legs to step forward. ...

Wow, this is a great post. Pet Peeve #7: I’m Sorry You Feel That Way totally sums up how snotty some people are when saying “I’m sorry you feel that way”. Wow.

I enjoy reading 360digest when I get a chance. Not only is my brother-in-law Dave a newly-minted real estate agent but the house next door was up for sale for a while recently. Real estate is one of those things that we all have to deal with, because we all need a place to live. Anyway, I was amused to read that on the blog this quote: In Portland, Ore., $300,000 means a clean and simple floating home on the Pacific ocean ...

In their article Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs published today, the Times makes a number of good points. Probably the best one is: As some wags have said, the initials D.R.M. should really stand for “Digital Restrictions Management.” One of the reasons I’m reluctant to switch to an Apple computer is because of the apparent lack of alternatives on the Mac. I don’t use Microsoft’s software or formats for music, I use AudioGrabber to rip to MP3 format and then listen to those in iTunes. ...

Just Cancel the @#%$ Account is a neat write-up of experiences with 32 online services, including big names like AOL, Earthlink, New York Times, Netflix and Vonage.

Redeye VC: Deja vu has a nice write-up on Zillow offering “Make Me Move”: A homeowner can easily post a Make Me Move price without exposing any personal information. Zillow then enables interested buyers to contact the owner through an email anonymizer. It’s a feature that I wish we had when my wife and I were looking for a new home. We knew - from driving around and around - that there were certain houses that we would be interested in. In retrospect, I wish we’d done the simple thing of leaving a letter on the front steps saying “if you ever sell ..” ...

Found a reference to Amazon selling 1000 Xbox 360s for $100. Which is what one would be worth to me. So I showed up and tried it, figuring that I wasn’t going to get one of these: However, I was interested in how the process worked and also wanted one of the alternate items. I was logged in to my Amazon account on both Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox 2. Things worked fairly normally until about 10:59, when the system became totally non-responsive for about 10 minutes and not very responsive (meaning I got 1 session to work but none of the others) for 15. ...

I’ve dealt with my local phone company for many years. From the roll-up of Pacific Northwest Bell into US West and then the merger with Qwest, prices have gotten higher and higher and the reliability has gotten a little worse. At some point my wife or I will decide that we don’t really need the land line and it will go away. The thing that’s most annoying about them is the amount of advertising they’re doing. They’re constantly on the radio, TV, billboards, in the newpaper, ads on the internet and direct mail pieces. It seems obvious that they’re not getting a lot of takers. Why not? Well, they could start with the big disclaimer on every ad. Anything that they’re promising on the front, they’re taking away on the back. ...

Super-Sizing Your Meal Costs More Than You Think talks about the hidden costs of super-sizing. “Once on the lips, forever on the hips” or something like that. I stopped off at McDonald’s to grab lunch for my daughter Charlie and myself as we drove out to Nana Sue’s. To my surprise, the plain hamburger and “fancy” cheeseburger no longer seemed to be available. There was only the double cheeseburger or bacon cheeseburger. And there was now a “Mighty Kid’s meal” that’s the equivalent of super-sizing a Happy Meal. ...

Laura Ries has a great article about Wal-Mart testing a high-end store in Texas. $500 bottles of wine at a Wal-Mart? What’s the message here? This is especially interesting coming on the heels of her article about how to properly segment: Scion, Toyota, Lexus or Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic. Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart? Don’t think so.