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The solution is to use crowdsourcing to fuck with them:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forum...

People there have been posting the callback numbers of the IRS scam, and then calling it repeatedly to waste their time. They've had to change their number multiple times. Same with other scams. If you get a call and aren't particularly busy, you can just keep them on the line for 10 or 15 minutes while you are doing something else and string them along. It's actually pretty easy. If you get a call for the microsoft scam, tell them you have to get to your computer and wait for it to boot up. That's an easy 5 minutes. With the IRS scam, they're actually patient/greedy enough to wait for you to drive up to CVS, buy a prepaid credit card, and read them the number. So you just need to convince them you are in the process of doing so and they'll happily wait.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forum...

$30 from newegg. I did this MANY years ago with a Brother b/w printer for $50, still on the original starter cartridge and still prints flawlessly. My wife and I print maybe 2x a month (more in tax season etc). When my cartridge runs out, the wife wants a color laser - which can be had for under $100 on sale.

Except, they didn't actually charge anyone, they just threatened it.

As usual, a good breakdown at Fatwallet:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forum...

They've been spammed with bad reviews, Streisand effect and all...

This was discussed on Fatwallet today, and most of the sensationalism was debunked quickly.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forum...

A few juicy tidbits:

More details: "An alarming 35 percent of people with credit files have debt in collections reported in these file s . This percentage is nearly identical to results from a 2004 analysis of credit bureau data by the Federal Reserve, which found that 36.5 percent of people with credit report s had debt in collections reported in their file s (Avery et al. 2004). Note that consumers themselves may not realize they have debt in collections. Some consumers report becoming aware of this debt only when they review their credit report (CFPB 2013)"

...and...

The actual source: http://www.urban.org/publicati...

Only 5.3% are currently past due on a bill. "5.3 percent of people with a credit file have a report of past due debt, indicating they are between 30 and 180 days late on a nonmortgage payment"

So most of the people have old debts which could be up to 7 years old.

So there you go. A lot of us have an outstanding medical bill on our credit reports, and we should check them more often.

Isn't there a legitimate mechanism to be used when Kleargear, a company that tries too hard to be geeky, is alleged to lie to credit agencies?

Yes there is. It's called a CRA dispute.

If the creditor fraudulently "validates the debt", then sue for the FCBA violations.

Blame the banks for that. They're attaching fees to electronic transactions which are higher than for processing paper checks. In all likelihood their fees were a lot higher than $1 per paycheck. I had to pick the banks for my personal accounts carefully because many of them don't allow or charge you for using ACH to move money between your own accounts. Sure the employer can pick a bank which allows free or low-cost ACH transactions for direct deposit. But if the employee's bank refuses or charges a high fee to ACH money in, the business is SOL.

Yeah in general a business which can't pay up to a few hundred dollars extra per employee per year probably isn't on solid financial footing. But on principle, electronic funds transfers should be cheaper than a printed paycheck, not more expensive.

Blame the banks for that. They're attaching fees to electronic transactions which are higher than for processing paper checks. In all likelihood their fees were a lot higher than $1 per paycheck. I had to pick the banks for my personal accounts carefully because many of them don't allow or charge you for using ACH to move money between your own accounts. Sure the employer can pick a bank which allows free or low-cost ACH transactions for direct deposit. But if the employee's bank refuses or charges a high fee to ACH money in, the business is SOL.

Yeah in general a business which can't pay up to a few hundred dollars extra per employee per year probably isn't on solid financial footing. But on principle, electronic funds transfers should be cheaper than a printed paycheck, not more expensive.

There's a good thread here detailing other AT&T customers experiences with getting out of their current contract without paying the ETF. That thread also contains extremely useful info about how to go to Arbitration with AT&T if they won't budge.

So would you rather be paying for solar $7 per watt or $1 per watt (which is what solar cells are expected to hit in a few years)?

We are already there on a semi-regular basis.
99cent/watt solar panel sales

The problem here is that the victim checked that it had cleared, by which time, IMHO, it should be too late for the bank to reverse the transaction.

Yeah, that's exactly what's not happening. The banks can take the money back up to two months after deposit. Taking unknown checks is economic extreme sports with no safety net.

A Sprint "Everything" data plan, even with a $10 tariff for 4G, is still ridiculously cheaper than the crazy high prices that AT&T gouges from its Apple-dazed captive masses.

If you decide to swing an employee referral plan for the Evo then you are really coming out ahead.

Mod parent up. This is partially true. However, there are exceptions. ATM transactions aren't covered by the 5 day policy (presumably because the bank is on the hook directly, not the merchant....funny how they're so helpful until it's their money on the line), along with a few other exceptions

Also, here is a pretty lengthy discussion of debit cards, including the risks involved in their use, and a lot of other useful details (including some of these visa rules and the exceptions)
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/989139

"My $1,000 colour laser printer came with full-capacity toner cartridges."

$1,000?! Buddy you bought the printer and ten toner packs for that price, you better believe they should give you full toners with a $1,000 color laser printer.

My $99 color laser printer came with toners two-thirds full but no complaints, it'll be awhile before I print 1,000 pages (two reams of paper!) and by the time I run out there will probably be another $99 color laser printer that's twice as fast, heck I still haven't used all of the starter toner in my $50 b&w laser printers.

Don't forget, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up! Make sure you hit some of the sites that keep an eye out for really good deals on computer components, like FatWallet and SlickDeals

There is a nice thread at FatWallet compiling lots of deals. While the main post hasn't been updated in a while, there are some recent posts with good deals.

The cash back stuff is tied affiliate marketing/advertising, which is what MS is trying to tie in to their search results. I see mention of http://farecast.com/ in other comments, but I believe most of their "tech" for the cash back program was pulled out of http://jellyfish.com/ . MS purchased jellyfish.com a while back, sucked all the goodness out of them, and tossed the carcass aside recently during layoffs.

There are still plenty of really good sites for finding deals, and http://fatwallet.com/ offers a competitive cash back program as well. Why wade through all the meaningless search results when trying to shop online, when you could go some place that ONLY has good deals? This is why MS's search will fail as a revenue generating product.

If you want a higher interest rate at any given time, just check out www.bankrate.com, which is a great site for researching the health of a bank and its various interest rates. Here's a page I often turn to in order to see what the highest rates are:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/rate/mmmf_highratehome.asp?web=brm&params=US,416&prodtype=chksav&market=416&product=33&state=US&sort=2

To choose a bank to deposit money into for savings, I generally will look at the bank with the highest interest rate that also has 4 stars(which indicates very good health). The bank I'm currently with for savings emails me whenever their rate changes, and they have excellent 24/7 customer service, with a competitive interest rate.

Another good site for this kind of thing is the finance section of www.fatwallet.com:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/

The users keep a running list of the top returning CDs, Savings Accounts, and Credit Cards. They talk about all the minutiae of the different accounts and customer service, etc...

a) no, Macs are not significantly more expensive than PCs

$1600 Dell: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/913148

$2800 MacBook Pro: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB604LL/A?mco=MzA3MTE3NA

You can keep trying to peddle that nonsense, but I think most /.ers are capable of comparing $1600 and $2800 and coming to their own conclusions. It's not even a close call.

You are the one spreading nonsense.

You are comparing a monster weighting 11 pounds and 2 inches thick to a 7 pound, 1-inch thick portable computer. Smaller parts sometimes cost more.

Try again with a Dull machine that you can carry.

And, by the way, with loudspeakers that are useful. A few days ago a friend of mine showed her Dell machine (business line) and complained that "laptop loudspeakers are crap" - we could hear almost nothing form her computer. My MBP had loud and relatively undistorted sound, and she was shocked...

Roberto

a) no, Macs are not significantly more expensive than PCs

$1600 Dell:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/913148

• Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
• 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
• 500GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
• DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
• NVIDIA® SLI(TM) Dual GeForce® 9800M GT with 1GB GDDR3 Memory
• 85 WHr Lithium Ion Battery (9-cell)
• 17 inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA (1920x1200)

$2800 MacBook Pro:
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB604LL/A?mco=MzA3MTE3NA

• 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
• 320GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
• Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + Discrete NVIDIA 9600GT
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution Glossy Widescreen Display (1920x1200)

You can keep trying to peddle that nonsense, but I think most /.ers are capable of comparing $1600 and $2800 and coming to their own conclusions. It's not even a close call.

In my experience, Macs are priced by Apple and rarely discounted much until they are EOLed for the next generation. Sometimes Microcenter or Macmall has $100 off or something like that.

Dell, on the other hand, changes their pricing and offers more often than I change my socks. I've found that you can get killer deals on them if you are willing to wait a few weeks until a deal rolls around. For instance (now expired), there were great deals for 17" laptops at 30-40% off what TFA paid:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/913148
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/912911

Of course, if you are incapable of that kind of patience, preferring instant gratification, then Dell is more than willing to charge you a lot more if you are foolish enough to just go to dell.com and start clicking on things. [ Slightly OT Side Story: Ever since my boss found out that I know how to work the magic dell website, I've earned huge brownie points for buying the same equipment at basically half the great educational rates offered to my university. Actually, at one point I accosted the school's Dell Rep with a printout of the various orders I put in through Dell Home and asked if they would give an educational institution the same deals available to everyone -- no points for guessing the answer. ]

Bottom line: Dell's prices are volatile and the author of TFA is totally clueless on how to best work that.

In my experience, Macs are priced by Apple and rarely discounted much until they are EOLed for the next generation. Sometimes Microcenter or Macmall has $100 off or something like that.

Dell, on the other hand, changes their pricing and offers more often than I change my socks. I've found that you can get killer deals on them if you are willing to wait a few weeks until a deal rolls around. For instance (now expired), there were great deals for 17" laptops at 30-40% off what TFA paid:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/913148
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/912911

Of course, if you are incapable of that kind of patience, preferring instant gratification, then Dell is more than willing to charge you a lot more if you are foolish enough to just go to dell.com and start clicking on things. [ Slightly OT Side Story: Ever since my boss found out that I know how to work the magic dell website, I've earned huge brownie points for buying the same equipment at basically half the great educational rates offered to my university. Actually, at one point I accosted the school's Dell Rep with a printout of the various orders I put in through Dell Home and asked if they would give an educational institution the same deals available to everyone -- no points for guessing the answer. ]

Bottom line: Dell's prices are volatile and the author of TFA is totally clueless on how to best work that.

$199 eee 900A at BBY.

I ended up paying more for the Samsung NC10 (8hr battery, stereo bluetooth), but I'm not a third world kid, so I can afford to be picky.

I know you're joking, but apparently all that is needed for the Social Security agency to declare you dead is for a coroner to mistakenly type your SS#. From there it will get to your credit reports and pretty soon all your accounts will be frozen. Here's someone who had it happen recently.

If you order tomorrow, you can get one for US $99 when you purchase some other hardware... http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/858597/

You mean like WM Wifi Router? Yeah I've been using that for about 18 months now already without the need to jailbreak my phone. Plus Sprint's SERO plan offers unlimited texting and data for $30 / month.

I've used WMWifiRouter many times with Sprint's SERO plan to bittorrent files (I max out at 100 kB/s up and down on EVDO) on my HTC Mogul.

Combined that with the fact that Sprint's early termination fees have recently been ruled illegal in one county and you have a pretty good setup, but most people can't see past the iPhone. *shrugs*

http://www.fatwallet.com/cash-back-coupons.php

Getting dinged $0.20 per spam SMS? That's a bit more annoying. There's no way to refuse a text message (on Sprint, at least). And thanks to the email-to-SMS gateway, the spammer doesn't get charged a penny. (I'm noticing that a huge percentage of spam I receive on my regular account is, for some strange reason, under 160 characters.)

Why would you want to upgrade the Mac Mini's video card? To play games?
[SFX: sound of room laughing]

Oh yeah, you can't.

Apparently PC morons like you can't think outside the box.

About four bucks, and I bought extras that day. (Regular price is fifteen bucks.) If you put the USB info string into Google, you can find OS X drivers for it from the OEM manufacturer's web site. And again you can't think outside the box.

Fatwallet thread on this
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=74&threadid=807548&start=0

Unlimited data and text (500min anytime, nights start at 7) with Sprint starting for $30 / month:
http://www.sprint.com/sero
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/680568/

Sero dude, Sero. It's US-wide. Also, Sero brought my $550 smartphone down to $125 after special pricing and rebates, so it's pretty sweet. With unlimited data you can run Skype and Microsoft's video VOIP ("Portrait") so it works out pretty well.

Some people have sent a message to Steam's support and they have "cleared" the account so that they could enter a new North America CD Key. Additionally, people have been getting their money back from certain Thai sellers. Here's the http://www.fatwallet.com/t/74/772041link to FatWallet thread.

Sony's has been out for a while actually, the 2nd Generation one is about to be released. I just got the 1st Generation one for $50 with a deal from http://www.fatwallet.com/t/74/745156

About a month ago the fatwallet community produced a crazy rebate scheme where you profit off bundled software. The scheme originated in this thread. The scheme has since been used for many more deals. I am just wondering if it is related? The rebate T&C say the rebate can not be for more than the cost of the product. The scheme worked by claiming rebates from the retailer (by buying a hardware and software bundle) and the software distributor at the same time and assuming they don't realize your the same person (i.e. lack of communication from the retailer and distributor). To sweeten the scheme you could buy competing software packages and use them for the upgrade rebate. If this is related then Frys must of caught onto the scheme.

That's interesting you would list those features... since Sprint's SERO (google it, wealth of information on http://www.slickdeals.net/ http://www.fatwallet.com/ http://www.howardforums.com/ provides just that kind of cellphone service for those who sign-up with Sprint's not so secret discount plan.

My SERO Plan:
$30/month
Unlimited data, EVDO rev. 0, rev. A when it is out. (I bought the HTC Mogul)
Unlimited text (promotion until 9/29, probably extended).
500 minutes, 7PM nights & weekends

It makes me laugh everytime I see someone develop a "cheap" computer with substandard, obsolete technology. The irony is that I can buy a nearly top of the line computer for $199 here in the states. It just takes some smart shopping and rebate forms. Examples:
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/749939/ (laptop for $181 after rebate)
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/749936/ (desktop for $180)

What I'm trying to say is that Fry's should open up a location in rural China.

It makes me laugh everytime I see someone develop a "cheap" computer with substandard, obsolete technology. The irony is that I can buy a nearly top of the line computer for $199 here in the states. It just takes some smart shopping and rebate forms. Examples:
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/749939/ (laptop for $181 after rebate)
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/749936/ (desktop for $180)

What I'm trying to say is that Fry's should open up a location in rural China.

I think I'll stick with my free laptop. Or my slightly less free laptop.

I think I'll stick with my free laptop. Or my slightly less free laptop.

Sorry to inform you but the days where a creditor needed a social security number to put something deragatory on you credit report are LONG gone. It is actually one of the biggest myth's of credit reports. See this: See MYTH #8: http://www.fatwallet.com/t/52/225082/

Ha, you have obviously never read the Fatwallet Finance Forums. Interest arbitrage is great thing.

Here is the technique I used to get a Wii with a minimum of effort:

• Once every few days, check a site like Fat Wallet for rumors of Wiis in a weekly ad at a major retailer.
• You may have to wait a couple weeks, but probably not more than that.
• Call the stores in your area the day before the ad comes out and see which is getting the most Wiis. You might also ask if they will hand out vouchers early.
• Showing up an hour before vouchers are handed out, or 2-3 hours before the store opens, will pretty much guarantee you a Wii. You can probably show up later. I got mine at Toys R Us 2 weeks ago and there were still 20 systems unclaimed when they started handing out vouchers.

Let me advise you that this is not as good a defense as you think. I did the same thing, and a company that I tried to quit from sent the "debt" (that I did not renew and tried to cancel) into collection, which to this day shows up on my credit record. I don't know if what they did is legal, but I can tell you it's been a huge pain in my ass to try to get this cleared up.

Read the following thread:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/arcmessageview.php ?catid=52&threadid=154139

And follow the link to the creditnet.com message board. That forum is VERY good at helping to get credit reports cleaned up. Getting invalid derogatory info off you credit report is usually a piece of cake, and if it is difficult they can tell you how to get a quick $1K out of the company that reported it (there are government regulations they have to follow, and if they don't you get free money). If the debt reported is valid, there is still a decent chance to get it removed (either because the company doesn't maintain proper documentation or fails to follow government mandated procedures for responding to complaints/inquiries).

And of course, you'll pay more for DLP -- with the better picture, they do charge a premium and no one really has too much to say about it. Prices seem to be settling at about $3000 for a 1080p system in the coming year;

The FW Finance faq: Free and Open Source Finance Applications at fatwallet lists other F/OSS applications, as well as a lot of useful links. The favorite of the FAQ is GnuCash & there are links on how to run it in Windows and OS X.

I posted a super-quick one-benchmark review of IE 7 here:

http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/664690/

I think it's only fair to do the same for Firefox 2.0.

I loaded about 40 tabs that I am currnently using in Firefox 1.5 (two windows) into Firefox 2.0. The memory usage was about 170mb, while Firefox 1.5 is ~140mb. (These are still mostly the same tabs as with IE 7, and that used over 400mb). 30mb increase isn't a big deal for me, but I would like to know what causes such an increase, and if it's worth it. The browser was still rather fast and responsive, so I don't really mind.

On an unrelated note, I installed Tab Mix Plus testing release in FF2 just to be able to make the tabs smaller and get SessionSaver to work. It's good, but I don't like the way the tab scroll buttons can sit on top of a tab. Plus I actually liked the default FF2 method of having one button on each end of tab bar, depending on whether I wanted to scroll tabs to the left or right.

Overall, I'm not sure if I'll be switching or if I'll stay with 1.5 for a while. 1.5 has been really stable for me lately, and I don't necessarily want to mess with that.

Oh, and it's beyond me why FF2 bittorrent isn't up on http://bittorrent.mozilla.org/ yet, but that's a totally different issue. They must have too much bandwidth. I went there to download the installer, and I was offered the file from a Japanese mirror! (I'm in US) And on a related note, I thought that including a bittorrent client in Opera was a little overkill, but I've now changed my mind. I believe that bittorrent should replace ftp and http as a default large file transport method. I would really like to see a very light bittorrent client built into FireFox. (Not an extension - with the default download)

m

Especially considering that I can get a new laptop for $399 without having to play with rebates...
Sale is dead now, but wait a week or so and there will be another

Really. Is this really a choice that you have to think about?

Somebody doesn't get FatWallet.

I bought a TI-83 Plus for 74.54 - $25 rebate = $49.54 on Aug. 17, 2006.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?ca tid=18&threadid=643359