Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

I was asked recently if I would look at a Dell laptop that was not recognizing a new battery. The new battery looked well made, fit perfectly in the Dell but was not recognized. I put the old battery in and got a message stating that the battery is at the end of it’s life cycle and buy a new battery. Here comes the gotcha! If you buy a Dell brand battery it is three times as expensive as the off brand. Now I didn’t have a new Dell battery to test but my guess is that the Dell brand battery will be recognized by the Dell laptop. The 3rd party vendor insists the battery will work if you follow their instructions which involve updating the bios, the CMOS, yadda yadda. Dell support simply said it isn’t our battery. Tsk Tsk. Third party people provided a bunch of busy work that did nothing. I also found it interesting that the Dell bios upgrade could not be done with the third party battery installed. I had to put the old battery in before it would update the bios. Interesting...

If you do a search on US Airways Sucks you will find an enormous number of disgruntled travelers. I have joined the club. It is not over a large amount of money, it is primarily a principle. On a recent flight, during web check in I noticed my wife and I were not seated together so I chose "Choice" seats and paid $10.00 each for them. On the diagram they appeared to be exit seats, thusly more leg room. I received the email confirmation of payment for the "Choice" seats. Upon being seated in the aircraft, I noticed that the seats were in no way choice, the flight attendant agreed that they could see no way they were choice seats. They were not on a bulkhead, aisle or exit row and there was NO extra leg room. Again, I asked the flight attendants and they agreed, they were not "Choice" seats and was advised to see the “help” desk in the Terminal. The people at the desk said they couldn't help me and gave me a 866-523-5333 number that no one answers. The r...

I know, the last three posts have not had a one word to say about money saving tips. Note the philosophic part in the Blog Banner. Prescription plans are a rip off. I know that is hardly news to any of the majority of us who have disgustingly expensive health plans. My plan gives me three months of prescriptions for the price of two if I submit my script to the mail order branch of the insurance company. Sounds good but appearances are deceiving. Take a recent example, a generic drug that I submitted to my insurance through the mail order pharmacy provides me with 90 days supply fo r $40.00, not too bad, right? Well my local pharmacist, (not the one in the previous blog) tell me if she submits the script to my my insurance company they will only provide a 30 day supply at the price of $14.99. So locally it is $5.00 more than the supposedly big saving I am getting from mail order. But wait there’s more, a set of free steak knives… not really. It gets better, under her pharmacies generic...