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August 21, 2005
Top 10 dot bombs
Trying to go to the old CDNow website now takes you to Amazon.com, but CDNow started off as an IPO (CDNW) back in February 1998 at $18 per share. It shot up to $39 in a couple of months, but was already starting the death spiral less than six months later. It was delisted from NASDAQ in August 2000 and was finally put out of its misery in September 2000 when Bertlesmann bought out the common stock and took it private.
I loved CDNow. They had more types of coupons and specials than Michael Jackson has had noses. My favorite was the $10 off every $20 purchase. That was two CDs for the price of one. And they threw in free shipping!
In grad school, I would sell CDs on eBay for ridiculous prices, then buy the CDs from CDNow and send them to the auction winner. On top of that, they would rebate something like 7% of your purchases PLUS they had an affiliate program where you'd earn another 5% if you used a certain link to make purchases. I must've bought $1000 worth of CDs doing that for something like $300 or $400 and sold them all on eBay.
Ah, the fond memories of wasting time on the internet to make a few hundred bucks when I should've been writing my thesis. Anyway, CNET put together a list of the Top 10 dot com flops of all time. CDNow is not on the list.
Posted by brian at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2005
A Fine Print Fine
If you signed up for a free credit report with freecreditreport.com or Experian, only to be hit with a fee later on for their credit monitoring service, you might be able to get a refund. It seems the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) thought consumers were tricked into an annual service when they thought they were just getting a free credit report.
If you want to see your credit report at no charge, go to the website set up by the FTC. This website is a result of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that lets you see your credit report for free once every 12 months.
Posted by brian at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2005
More free internet access
A couple of days ago, I linked to an article describing how more people are using their neighbor's wireless systems to access the internet for free. CNN followed up that article with some readers' comments on Friday, but a more interesting article on this same topic came out today and speculates that Google might be considered blanketing the entire nation in free wireless access. Go Google!
Posted by brian at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2005
Free cable modem
Last month, I wrote how happy I was with Comcast because I was still getting free extended cable (about $45/month) even though I am only paying for limited basic ($15). I also said I was using my neighbor's wireless internet for free after he told me he didn't mind.
Apparently, a lot of people are doing the same thing - using their neighbor's wireless to access the web for free. This article at CNN talks about the growing trend and whether it's legal or not. It looks like it could be considered theft in California, but no one is being prosecuted for it. Woo hoo!
Posted by brian at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2005
Walking the streets for money
When I was in grad school, I remembered watching what looked like a freshman sitting outside during lunch and throwing his change onto the sidewalk. Maybe he was trying to impress people ("Look at how rich I am! I'm throwing money away!") but after he left I ended up going over and picking up about 20 cents.
After that I started looking for coins on the ground around campus and realized that either (1) kids have a lot of holes in their pockets or (2) once a penny or nickel or dime hits the ground, kids are too lazy to pick it up. (Laundry quarters, on the other hand, are nearly sacred - no one parts with those). So I started gathering the coins I found and putting them in my Found Money jar. I counted it this weekend.
My girlfriend started picking up money on the ground, too. It's amazing how much it adds up. I thought it was kind of freakish to do this so it took a couple of years to tell other people about my pseudo-homeless person habit of looking for pennies everywhere I went.
But when I told my parents, they took right to it (maybe it's the genes). It has now turned into a game. My parents were beating us for a while, but that's because my mom once found $35 at a gas station and put that in their Found Money jar. We've now come back, thanks to a good string of dimes and quarters and one dollar bill at the Sunday farmer's market.
Another funny thing is all the foreign money we've found. We have a lot of Canadian coins in the jar, but also a Chinese coin, pesos, euros, two German coins, and a New York subway token (found here in California). The thing I find most amazing is that I've found two U.S. pennies in Singapore (the streets aren't as clean as they say) and a U.S. nickel in Venezuela.
Oh yeah - the jar now has $73.02 in it. That's only $97,926.98 short of these three kids.
Posted by brian at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2005
Free money from balance transfers
I haven't done the balance transfer trick in a while, but I'm thinking of starting up again. For a while, I was deluding myself into thinking were going to buy a house soon and I didn't want to knock down my credit score by a few points by applying for credit cards. But since 2 bedroom/1 bath 90 year old homes cost $650K and up here on the Bay Area peninsula, I'm realizing we won't be able to afford that for years.
The basic idea is to get free loans from credit card companies through 0% balance transfers and earn interest on the money during the promotional rate. The basic steps:
- Apply for 0% balance transfer from, say, Discover Card to your, say, Bank of America Visa
- After Discover pays Bank of America, call Bank of America and ask for a refund, telling them that you overpaid your Visa
- When you get the refund, put the money into a money market account, say, an ING or Virtual Bank money market
- Pay the minimum monthly payments on the balance transfer to Discover Card every month
- Pay off the balance when the promotion ends with the cash in your money market account
- Keep the interest.
- Rinse and repeat, if desired.
You have some things to watch out for, though.
First, the balance transfer money isn't as easy to earn as in the past - a lot of credit card companies, especially Discover, charge balance transfer fees - so you have to make sure the interest you're going to earn, after taxes, will cover the fees. Seecond, you don't want to use the card that has a balance transfer on it. That's because, even though you might have 0% on the balance transfer balance, you'll likely have a much higher rate on the purchase balance. And when you make that minimum payment every month, it will be applied to the balance transfer balance, not the purchase balance, meaning your interest charges will start to add up. So only use dedicated cards for balance transfers.
A nice discussion is here talking about more of the catches and subtleties of making free money. When I was a grad student, earning $17K a year, I once had about $40K in free loans from the credit card companies, earning around $800 a year at 5% in money market accounts. Interest rates aren't as good now, but that was a lot of money to me then, considering, after rent and food, I had about $150 left at the end of the month.
Posted by brian at 07:11 PM | Comments (1)