People keep telling me to just sign a new contract with another provider and get a subsidized phone; they hear the price of the phone I'm going to buy and act like I'm crazy. I want to run the numbers hear to show why everyone saying that... is crazy.

I want to buy a Google phone for my Sprint plan, without dropping my actual plan because my Sprint plan is so low in price ($30/mo).

I want a strong Android phone with a keyboard. My plan has 450 minutes, infinite text, and infinite data, which I'm happy with. Let's take some common price points as examples.

* iPhone: Let's pretend I wanted an iPhone - it's the #1 phone by far for a reason. I hate its lack of a keyboard, but let's pretend. $100 for the phone (subsidized), $90/mo to AT&T on a 2-year contract, with taxes and fees call it $115. AppleCare from Apple is another $69 to protect the phone. AT&T's coverage lately is notoriously crap for the iPhone, so there's a suffering built-in here.

iPhone & AT&T: $100 + $70 + $115*24 = $170 + $2760 = $2930.


* Expensive plan: Verizon will sell me a Droid for $200 if I sign a 2-year contract. The lowest I can go on that plan is 450 minutes with infinite data and infinite texts (nights start at 9pm) for $100/mo before taxes and fees. With taxes and fees that's about $130/mo. Since that 2-year contract is really subsidizing that phone, let's do the math:

Verizon and Droid: $200 + $130*24 = $200 + $3120 = $3320.


* My plan, retail phone: My current plan on Sprint is only $30/mo, $35/mo after taxes and fees, for the same service Verizon is providing. There are some caveats: Sprint coverage is comparable but Verizon works in the subway. Sprint rents time on Verizon's network and failovers between the 2 mid-call can be noticable. But generally the signal is good. Sprint's customer service is terrible - you really couldn't do worse than Sprint when it comes to calling someone to get something solved, unless that company you're calling is Google (they don't even give you a phone number... at least Sprint lets you call so a recording can hang up on you).

If I stick with my current plan, which is only $30/mo for the same service Verizon is providing above, I need to buy a new phone full price (on Sprint that's a Samsung Moment). Best Buy will sell me one for $650, and if I get the Extended Warranty it's another $170 - if anything happens to it I can get it replaced for free.

Sprint and Best Buy: $650 + $170 + $35*24 = $820 + $840 = $1660.


* My plan, online retailer, local repair company: If I just search for the Samsung Moment online, I get this mess. But if I force the name to be in the title and look for things over $150, I get this tidy search. That includes an online retailer with GREAT reviews selling for $370 - which just goes to show how much Best Buy is making off of you (and Sprint when they sell it to you at $475).

But an online retailer isn't going to service my phone. A local provider, CellularDr, will fix most basic issues like broken keys or a broken screen for parts and labor - judging from their website about $100 a fix, total. Let's say I break it twice in 2 years - reasonable assumption:

Sprint, online retailer, Cellular Dr: $370 + $200 + $35*24 = $570 + $840 = $1410.


So as you can see, if I decided to go to Verizon with a Droid, I'd get slightly better coverage, somewhat better customer service, and probably replace broken phones for a reasonable fee here and there at the Verizon store (maybe another $100 on top of that).

If I decide to buy my phone outright, I'm not even on a contract - I can change phones or drop service any time without a fee - and I save $3320-1410 = $1910.

So yes, I am going to buy my phone outright, because I like keeping my $2000.

I think Lipton should increase sales by encouraging customers to also use teabags as air fresheners, with a "Teabag Your House" campaign.

No idea how to pass this on to legislators... but here's my idea for improving healthcare.

The less frequently a consumer buys a product the more likely they are to get screwed. Car dealers and mattress dealers make a lot of money off of people because you don't know the actual value of the potential crap you're buying - you're really just going on what they say. This is unlike food - it's cheap to try several brands of milk and know first-hand after buying milk 100 times which brands are good and which are terrible. The profit margins on milk are small, and there's no salesman there partly because there's no opportunity to lie.

Health care manages to actually be worse than a car or mattress because at least after you buy either of those you get to immediately try it. With healthcare, you might go ten years of paying for it before you "try" it - aka get sick.

All it takes is one healthcare company to notice this and reduce prices by finding ways to not pay out after years of you paying in. Customers will shift to the lower priced plan and all the other companies either do the same thing, or die out. We need a way to "try" healthcare before it's too late.

I think it takes 2 changes:

1) Make all healthcare payments go through an escrow account. The account doesn't need to hang onto the money, it just needs to be in the middle for the next part to work.

2) Make it legal to test your actual coverage by filing a fraudulent claim. If you're allowed to, for example, file all the typical documents for having cancer - all the drugs and treatments etc - and see if that money shows up in the escrow account or not - you'll have an opportunity to find out what you're really paying for before you need it. And you'll be able to test it when you have the luxury of testing it, rather than having to fight it when you're sick, which is not a time when you're ready to go picking fights.

I don't imagine many consumers would go through the relatively complicated process of testing their care, but it would allow watchdog publications and groups like Consumer Reports to sponsor tests. They could choose sample customers, and test their current coverage for them, by helping them file all the fraudulent claim forms and monitoring the escrow account. They could then rank companies based on how much was covered, how much work it took, and how fast the money showed up in escrow. Then the healthcare company gets it all back.

This prevents this obvious game. Insurers that choose to save money by screwing customers will get noticed by watchdog publications and called out on it. This will drive customers away to the companies that might cost a little more, but actually cover you, and drive these liars out of business or force them to cover you as well. And the remaining companies will have to compete honestly, instead of playing a shell game.

Maybe more conversations should be like radio and TV "conversations," where everything you're going to talk about is already setup so that you never discuss anything you don't want to, and you always have a good story to respond to every question

Sure being a movie murderer SEEMS fun, but it would just be so damned inconvenient - I mean you've got to make those phone calls to the newspaper, but you have to do them from a blocked number and those are hard to maintain, and then you've gotta get one of those weird things that changes your voice. Who has the time?

Finally someone comes along and makes taunting newspapers and police departments about your crimes a breeze.

http://www.spoofcard.com/t

Just think of all the great uses for such a service, like:

* Telemarketing to people without them having a means to identify and sue you
* Calling in a bomb threat
* Prank 911 calls
* Be creative! Try a quick call threatening ethnic cleansing

In fact this service is so convenient I can't think of a single use for it that doesn't anger me!

I wish I had google for my house

myhouse: spatula
left-top drawer on sink side of kitchen
Did you mean: arugula?

Thanks myhouse.

I had a successful day today. The following businesses found out they screwed up today, all in one day. I feel very accomplished.

CapitalOne: TOLD
Sprint: TOLD
Time Warner: TOLD
Gym: TOLD

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

-Adolf Hitler, 12 April 1922
http://nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm

CurrentTV:
"It is a known fact that single women are the most awful people in the world, worse even than lepers.
Why you ask?
Because lepers get to live with others, in places called Leper Colonies.
But single women live alone."

"I have come to the conclusion that the making of laws is like the making of sausages—the less you know about the process the more you respect the result." -1898, someone in the Illinois Legislature