Over the past year I have been using a Chase Ultimate Rewards Debit Card for most of my purchases. The program advertises “4 points for every $5 you spend on purchases made without using your PIN!” and “earn up to 10 bonus points for every $1 you spend shopping online at the Ultimate Rewards Mall!”. Unfortunately the program is less than realistic and appears to be full of multiple loopholes.

First off, those 4 points you earn from purchases made without you pin, rarely seem to appear. On the info page, Chase claims that internet purchases will count as points, you would assume that seeing how it’s impossible to use your pin online, but sadly they have never manifested for me. I make many purchases online and have almost never seen those points appear. Secondly, if you earn points at a certain store, don’t expect points the next time you make the same purchase. The fact is that not all qualifying purchases will be counted. I have charged multiple similar transactions, all without using a pin, and only some of those counted for points.

Beware Of These Loopholes And Cancel Early!

• Not all (or more like most) purchases will not count as points, even if you are not using your pin.
• The Annual fee is $25 dollars and is charged 17 days after the card is activated. You must cancel your card in advance of those 17 days or you will be charged a second year.
• Write down the date your card was issued, you will only be reminded of the yearly fee the day after it is too late to cancel.
• If you spend $40 dollars at the grocery store and earn points the first time, don’t expect to earn them the next time. The program appears to balance how many points you earn for similar transactions.

The Ultimate Rewards Mall

This may be the biggest joke of the whole program. The Ultimate Rewards Mall is where you can shop online and spend you Reward Points. I warn you now, it is a sad joke. Everything in the store is massively over priced and is usually complete junk. The selection is abysmal and is limited to very few categories.

Do you really want to spend $10,000 to get a free toaster? That is what the mall boils down too, spend $1500 and get a $10 gift card at sears. Wow. Now I’m excited.

Learn From Others Mistakes

Take my word for it, the Ultimate Rewards Program is just a way to get people to pay a yearly fee. There is no reward at the end of the rainbow. In the end I can’t say I’m surprised, its Chase after all, they have never been known for their honesty and integrity.

Save your energy and avoid this program like it’s a plague.

Technorati Tags: chase, chase bank, chase ultimate rewards, ultimate rewards, rewards debit card, chase debit card, ultimate debit card, chase online, chase purchases, chase online purchases

Yahoo’s new ad is bright, ear catching, and filled with positive thoughts. The one thing it isn’t though, is realistic. In the new ad, Yahoo states that their homepage is all about you. It’s your sports, your news, and your entertainment all rolled into one!

Disclaimer: I admit, before writing this, I had not used Yahoo’s Search in over 5 years. Therefore to be fair, I signed up for a Yahoo username to “experience” the new Yahoo of today.

After signing up, here is the Yahoo homepage I was greeted with. This is a random page and the first one that loaded for me. It’s an example only.

Wow, I have to look at all of this just to search for bread recipes?

Not only is this information completely unnecessary for my goal of finding bread recipes, it’s actually the complete opposite of what Yahoo claims to be in their new ad.

We will start with exhibit A and only focus on Yahoo’s and Google’s Search homepage.

What really separates Yahoo’s Search Page and Google’s Search page apart is their focus. Yahoo tries to make a simple search a “experience”, while Google makes it a simple search. Attempting to appeal to every person in this world with one handful of random popular topics is actually counter productive. In the end Yahoo’s attempt at mass appeal ends up being, mass disillusionment.

Here is the ad from Yahoo. To me the ad is a absolute hypocrisy, but as always, think for yourself and if you wish, post your thoughts in the comment section below.

Technorati Tags: google, yahoo, yahoo ad google, yahoo ad, yahoo against google, yahoo search, google seach

If you haven’t heard already, the Mega Liquidation Club Sale is now Closeout Club Online. We have been covering the topic of these particular liquidationcloseout sales on The State of Affairs for quite some time now.

Our main hope of resolve with this coverage was to convince the people that are running the sale, to change their marketing tactics. The main problems we and others have came across are:

1. Misleading advertisements – They show products in the background of their ads, such as a ipod or Xbox 360, that they do not sell at the events.
2. Some times the ads do not warn you that there is a $5, $8, or $10 per-person entrance fee to the event. On top of that, they do not warn you that parking will be at least $8 dollars for the event.
3. Almost none of products are high quality, most are generic copy’s. I even heard one account of pirated CD’s being sold at the event.
4. Most of the products are priced higher then what you can buy at a general retail store such as Best Buy or Target.

I think the company could reform and become a viable sales model, but as is, their bait and switch tactics are just out of line. As in the past I have said, they don’t care if you buy anything at the event, I believe, they recoup all of their cost solely with the entrance fee.

That means as long as they can keep convincing people to show up, they will make some money.

If you are tired of seeing those ads on tv, the best option is to contact you local station that is airing the ads and request that they are removed for being misleading. That is what happened when attendees complained in San Diego and I don’t think the sale has been back since.

What do you think should happen with Closeout Club Online?

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A while back a friend of mine, we’ll call him Frank for this example, tipped me off to a new scam that was happening at his local Safeway. I take scams very seriously and I always try to shed light on them if there is substantial evidence that it is indeed a scam, so I told my friend to get back to me in a month or two and report his findings.

Well Frank got back to me and not only has the scam continued, it has actually increased at his local Supermarket. From his findings, I can only concluded that this is once again a bait & switch tactic to get consumers to purchase items priced higher than advertised.

How the scam works

At first Frank had though the store was miss-pricing items, which is a natural occurrence with a store with that many items, but after a few weeks he realized that was not the case at all.

At hi-traffic stores, many low price items sell out and are not able to be restocked right away. This leads to empty spaces on shelves next to higher priced items, which is generally seen as unattractive and is usually avoided if possible.

The new tactic at Frank’s store solves that problem with simply “fronting” the higher priced item in place of the lower priced item.

1. Item 1 is sold out
2. Item 2 is spread out and placed in front of item 1′s price tag
3. Item 1 becomes the bait and item 2 becomes the switch

Instead of paying $4 for two items (2 for $4 deal), you end up paying $12 for two items ($6 each)! This is a real example he gave me.

How to avoid the scam

Frank is a meticulous budget shopper. He scrutinizes and reads almost every receipt he gets. This was what helped him uncover the switch.

The best advise I can give to any shopper is too know what you are buying. Don’t simply trust that the item above the price tag, is the item on the tag.

This could be a isolated store that is attempting to boost profits in hopes of getting larger bonuses or pay raises, but my suspicion is that it is happening more often then we think. So please, read your receipts and make sure the item in your cart is the item on the tag.

Is this happening at your local supermarket? If so leave a comment below with the details of your experience.

Technorati Tags: supermarket scam, scams, safeway scam, fraud, bait and switch, fronting items, overcharged supermarket, overcharged, grocery shopping, grocery store, store scam, groceries

Since the dawn of the internet and file-sharing, record companies began to see major losses in their profits. With the new technology changing the world of music distribution, the actors involved have yet to adapt. So far we have seen various responses from musicians and record labels…

1. Integrating products, software, and forced paid downloading
   Some software require a paid membership for unlimited downloads, while other companies such as Apple, produces an MP3 player that requires you to use the Itunes software in order to transfer music to the device. The hardware generates a demand for paid downloading. This is a merging of big corporations in technology and media.
2. Musicians cut out the middle man and distribute the music themselves
   We have seen small “under ground” musicians who do their own promoting, distribution, and touring. In other words, the modern musician handles both the business and artistic sides of their band. We have also seen some big artists experimenting with the idea of adaptation, such as Nine Inch Nails. There are many online resources to do this with as well. This is a decentralized industry, and it comes with more competition.
3. Using television shows to build a market for music
   We have seen the Naked Brothers Band, Hannah Montana, Cheetah Girls, and Jonas Brothers… they all came out of a Disney show, and once successful, they began to air music videos. Children are more likely to buy merchandise off of their favorite shows. This changes television to become key advertising for a product such as music.
4. Ad sponsored and paid memberships
   This will provide the funds for reimbursing the record labels. This is a moderate change from the traditional structure of the music industry.
5. Destroying the community
   Record companies can mass-upload blanks, viruses, and poor quality files to the major download sources. This will make the search more difficult and the paid downloading more appealing. Record companies can also file complaints to public uploading websites and threaten to shut down their operations.

So in the changing world, the music industry has yet to restructure itself while free music download is still flourishing. What will ensue out of the anarchy in the meantime should be interesting to watch. What has been successful so far? What has failed?

Another aspect that may prove interesting is the new technologies that may influence the future of music distribution (based off speculation and paranoia):

1. Music recognition software
   Verizon Wireless has this new software that can recognize songs. It is currently being used to assist customers in searching for a song that they heard on the radio or etc., so that they can purchase and download it as a ringtone. This can also be potentially used for restricting music uploading on community-based uploading sites. That is, if the uploading process can also include a song or video recognition…
2. Re-implementing the old restrictions
   Upload quality restrictions, file size restrictions, and file extension restrictions… however, it would not work without an organized effort between major websites, and even if they did group together, music downloading and streaming will simply de-centralize into a bunch of smaller sources.
3. Restricting internet access
   This would be on internet service providers’ (ISP) part. This could benefit the bank accounts of ISPs, but would face resistance from those who support internet neutrality and global connectivity. This may also face opposition from those who feel that ISPs should not use their technological power in an inappropriate area (such as political and indirect influence on other industries).

Technorati Tags: music industry, music industry sales, music industry artists, music industry labels, music industry management, music industry trend, music industry market, music pirated, music pirating, music illegal, illegal downloading music, piracy industry, music industry downloading, download music from internet

A couple weeks before Christmas, Rachel attended the Tacoma Mega Liquidation Sale and was sorely disappointed with the event as a whole. The Mega Liquidation Sale continued it’s way down to San Diego and received so many complaints that the San Diego 6 News affiliate pulled the Mega Liquidation Sale Ads from its broadcast.

Also in recent developments, the city of San Diego convicted Bruno Vic, one of the event’s organizers, with a misdemeanor charge of operating a “close-out” sale without a license.

Now The Mega Liquidation Sale is changing it’s web address to closeoutclubonline.com. Unfortunately, not much else has changed. Without illusion, the products you should expect to see at these events are not name brands. They are low quality, over priced products, and if you see an Xbox 360 or an Ipod in the commercial, do not expect them to be at the event.

Bruno Vic did contact us here at The State of Affairs and stated that if you are unhappy with the event, you can ask for your money back. The San Diego 6 news helped many unhappy customers get their money back when the event came to their town, so if you choose to attend and are unhappy as well, do not hesitate to request your money back.

If you attend the event please leave a comment below with your experiences. Perhaps the quality of the event has changed since past months, but I’m not putting my money on that claim just yet.

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A friend once told me that conservative economic policy has and will maintain “equality of opportunity”, whereas the socialists wants to change things so that we would have “equality of result”.

At first glance, “equality of opportunity” makes sense – individuals should be driven by their own initiative to make the most rational economic decisions, and become responsible for their own standard of living. However, if we look at the real world today, not everyone gets to start on the same footing. To deny this is to deny the statistics on how children inherit their parents’ social class – the rich do in fact stay rich, while the poor stay poor. Without the belief that we do have equal opportunity, the rest of the thought structure falls apart.

So when we look at economic policy today, equal opportunity goes hand in hand with personal accountability and the privatization of social services. For some under this ideological banner, they also are convinced that social services are immoral because it takes away individual responsibility, creating paupers, higher taxes, and “freeloaders”. They also feel that if they looked at the people who failed in the rat race, they would be able to tell them what they did wrong.

This of course, is the same friend who went to Pepperdine, (a university in Malibu, California), completely on grant and aid money. His own hypocrisy aside, he began to explain what “equality of result” was all about. Ultimately, it is everyone ending on the same grounds. Where that would be (as in after college? or on our death bed?) is still unclear. This would technically remove the initiative of individuals to try to succeed, whose actions generated and maintained this great country.

What would be the point to do this if I’m just going to get paid the same as that? Well, for some, it is the difference from becoming a doctor as opposed to an engineer (or even a grunt at Taco Time). Apparently, it’s not only wages that determine equality of result – this also brings about “re-distribution of wealth”. My friend thinks that his dreams of making $70,000/year will be hampered by re-distribution.

I think most people don’t understand how much money is in this country. I’m not talking about the money in the doctor’s wages, or the money in the small business owner’s pocket. I’m talking about the money in the largest corporations, in CEO pay, in our health care industry. We’re referring to the top 1% of people owning 99% of the wealth. And just to clarify, there is a difference between wealth and income.

Wealth is an asset that can generate more income and wealth. Income is wages, salary, tips, or etc. In other words, wealth is longer lasting than income, although income can be used to invest in wealth, like a house for example. So for the 1% who owns practically all the wealth in this country, somehow these people are excluded from the picture of “redistribution”.

Anti-socialists always had this picture instilled by the USSR’s example – that the middle class will become poorer as a result of redistribution. We remember that Stalin’s dekulakisation not only exterminated the better-off peasants, but blamed them for the nation’s poverty – he sought to make the poorer classes better off on the dime of the middle class.

This is why a lot of the happy-to-be lower-middle class folks (we’re talking people who make 30-40,000/year) complain about the government helping the poor. These people worked hard to have what they have, why should they pay taxes to help lazy bums, and why should we have socialized health care, etc? This is like the bedniaks and seredniaks of the USSR. These people see redistribution in a frame that excludes the truth about the wealth in this country.

Read, learn, and redefine.

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These are some of the funniest videos on the web and that’s not just limited to the best pro-freedom videos on the web. I guarantee you these videos are so funny, even Francisco Franco would love em’.

CAUTION: Some of these videos are quite mind expanding and may require some assembly.

Know a good anti-fascist joke?

Technorati Tags: jokes, funny jokes, joke videos, anti fascist, anti fascism, anti fascist action, anti fascists, bill hicks, george carlin, jimmy dore, lewis black, anti fascist videos, anti fascist jokes, pro-freedom, freedom, freedom jokes, pro freedom jokes

Roland Barthes wrote an essay during the 1970s called “The Death of the Author”. It was a postmodern idea on how readers can selectively ignore the pleasure of reading an author’s text by making judgments on the writer himself. When reading, different people generate a variety of interpretations that were either intentional or non-intentional from the writer. Language is the carrier of these meanings itself and the impressions that it lays on the reader… may it be cultural connotations, the evolution in parlance, and from the reader’s background and current interests.

Barthes was writing about language, but this is also a place where a lot of great artists brew. You hear the words and lyrics of Saul Williams and it strikes a chord in your soul, desiring for you to tease out different ideas embedded into a single poem, with which it was embodied in a form so lucid that it can only be grasped intuitively. Who the person is is irrelevant, for he is just like everyone else – a cultivation of one’s experiences which is derived from a cultural frame in time. And also on a side note of Williams, knowing oneself is also to know of other people. It is and act of bringing together to progress human understanding. So what is with the modernist media, its need to divide people and create personalities to subscribe to?

Say you are watching a music video on MTV, there is a certain language in video production – scenes, body gestures, and imagery. A commercial-styled video would have modernistic trends embedded in it. Guns and Roses (Sweet Child Of Mine): big hair, big production, and big amps to name a few elements. Then you have Marilyn Manson, who is just a big “freak show” reaction to the production of glamour. Well, you also have the one in between, such as Red Hott Chili Peppers (the one that goes, “California rest in peace/pieces”): using modernistic elements to deconstruct the language itself; they’re still pretty while they’re doing it.

The thing that makes something commercial is the idea of a singular identity. And when you consider the complexity and diversity of a person’s identity, you will find that in the business world, there will be a lot of products to sell. A lot of the modern rock musicians on MTV today sport the hair, the clothes, the moshing audience, and other things that defy pop music and the conventions of the conservative 50s. If they said, “get off my lawn!” the reactionaries would say, “we’ll trash your lawn!” But upon examination, such musicians were created in the same factory as Britney Spears or Avril Lavigne… which the three are supposedly completely different ideas. Or at least marketed as such.

You have those who like guitar-playing Michelle Branch because they denounce talentless Britney Spears, or you have those who like virginity-intact Jessica Simpson because they denounce the slutty Christina Aguilera. But you know what? The four sing about the kind of love that appeals to 12 year olds who are just about to meet their first Prince Charming. People tend to buy what they can identify with or wish to subscribe to. Although I do not have statistics to back this claim up, one can guess from watching a few mainstream music videos, its perpetuation, and being aware of the arts that are outside of this box. You don’t even have to watch mainstream videos, even commercials on most corporate products pretty much try to appeal to a certain strand of our identity.

Who is Saul Williams?

Technorati Tags: roland barthes, the death of the author, image music text roland barthes, roland barthes essay, roland barthes the death, roland barthes structuralism

What do you do if you feel your rights as a consumer have been violated, but after trying to resolve the issue directly with the company there seems to be no resolve? If you find yourself in this situation, you have a couple easy options that you can look into.

These options should only be utilized if you have attempted, but failed, to resolve the issue directly with the company. Also, you should always make a complaint in writing to the company and keep a copy for your own records. If you note that you’ve done so in your complaint to the BBB or a state Attorney General, you will have a much higher chance of seeing a resolve.

Step by Step

1. File a complaint with the company in writing
2. File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau
3. File a complaint with your state’s Attorney General and the Attorney General of the state where the company’s headquarters is located

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