• Turbo Tax will help to find every deduction you deserve
• Turbo Tax can get W-2 information from over 100,00 companies and several financial institution and automatically put it into the right places on your return – half your work done in less than seconds.
• All the math is done through their software, so there is no worry for any human errors.
• And probably the most important benefit, Intuit Turbo Tax uses the same encryption technology used by banks to ensure that your information is safe and secure.

I’ve personally used various tax softwares, and I must say that it takes all the hassle and complications out of doing your taxes.  It’s definitely a good investment to ensure you get the highest possible return on your taxes.

Business, Premier, Deluxe, Basic

Brent

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Many moons ago, when I first cut the apron strings and moved out on my own, finding a room to rent was fairly difficult. I had to get the local newspaper, and just blindly call whoever had a room that I might be able to afford. After that I had to find a way to get to all these places and look to see if it was a good fit for me (I didn’t drive, so it was a challenge). I then quickly found the nearest exit for a couple of places, because the landlords seemed to be a bit too creepy for a young woman starting out in the real world.

How I survived back then without a computer, I have no idea.

When I finally sat down to do some internet searches, I found quite a few places that specialize in finding roommates. One I found is Roommates.com. They ask you where you are looking to live, how much you are looking to spend etc. After you are finished plugging in your information, they give you a list of matches that best describes your preferences. Up to this point the service is free. If you want to be able to actually contact folks, you need to subscribe. There are other websites around that do the same thing and all charge a fee to get the most out of their sites. They seem to be good options, if there are good matches for you.

In addition to Roomates.com, I also went the cheap route. Craigslist is a great resource. Many times folks put pictures of themselves and their places, full descriptions, and you don’t need to buy anything to contact them. In fact, I posted a “housing wanted” add last night, and I already got 4 responses from some promising places. I am currently playing e-mail tag with a few of them, assessing whether or not it would be a good potential match, before I even leave the house.

Finding a roommate these days is a lot easier than it used to be.

Jennifer

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The company that seems to have the most advertising out there is Proflowers.com. After hearing their ad on the radio for the 15,000th time I decided I should give them a shot (because you should always trust the person who yells the loudest, right?). They also had some of the best prices out there (beating 1-800 Flowers.com by about $10 on average).

It turns out that there is a reason for the cheap price. The flowers arrived a day later than they were scheduled (which is a big problem on Valentine’s Day), and came FedEx. There was no arrangement to the flowers, and they came with 10 step instructions on how to arrange them yourself. While this does allow them to offer slightly better prices it makes for a very poor presentation as a gift. They were also left on her doorstep for 5 hours, which isn’t a huge problem in sunny California but can be very bad in places like Philadelphia (biased video, but not totally inaccurate).

I wouldn’t say to never use proflowers.com. If you are looking for some flowers in your house, and you have a knack for floral arrangement then there is a chance you will save some money and be happy with what you get. However, if you are giving flowers as a gift you may want to try another option. 1800 flowers does do hand delivery, and the extra money you will spend is well worth the quality you will receive. Below are pictures of the product my girlfriend received, and the process of putting it all together:

Kris

This is what I was expecting.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Here is a box.

After 30 minutes of cutting, soaking, plucking, and such… the mess.

The Final Product: Not awful, but not exactly a $50 arrangement.

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Well, it’s pretty bad. Not unusably so, since I now have one site correctly uploaded and nameservered, but I wouldn’t recommend mydomain’s interface or documentation to anyone I didn’t want to later punch me in the eye.

I’m not normally here to push Become’s services, but in this case we actually have some very useful research results for web hosting–research I should have done. Oh well, another lesson learned on the series of tubes. Tune in next time and find out why Aram bought iamgoingtogetevenwithelijahwoodifitsthelastthingido.com.

Aram

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My biggest issue came from BackCountry.com. I ordered two items, one at $65 and one at $20. The package came lickity split in only two days. The only problem was the $20 item was not in the package. It was very poorly sealed and could have been forgotten or stolen; I will never know (unless the lady at the apartment office starts wearing it). I went on to the website where they had a live chat. I signed on and within two minutes I was talking with a live person. I explained that I never received the item. They asked for my shipment number and customer id number and sent another in two days with no questions asked! Way too easy.

As a side note, I know that at least once a month this happened in my store. Most of the time one of our cashiers forgot to bag an item. The unwritten rule was if the item was under $50, then to apologize and give it to the consumer. If it was over $50, then we had to ask for their patience as we confirmed it on our camera system. It makes me wonder what would have happened if the $65 item had been missing from Backcountry.

My only other issue was with PersonalCreations.com. I made the mistake of ordering an item that had a 4 week turnaround time. They still got it to me by Dec 31st (only a 2 week delay). I guess my advice is to read the fine print on when they expect it to arrive…

Other retailers I purchased gifts from were FragranceSupplier.com, OnlineSports.com, TigerDirect.com, Wine.com, and Amazon.com. All of these retailers shipped quickly and without issue.

What a BUST! So, since we are here to help you the consumer, please send us your tales and troubles from this holiday season of buying. We would be glad to give you advice or even help you fight the good fight.

Daryl

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I know I’m not the first person to be irked by this, but for the love of Pete, WHY? I understand their inclination to squeeze us for every last penny that they can–that’s how these things work–but what gets me is that venues use them in the first place. They’re just a leech. $14 a ticket? Maybe if you’re driving the ticket to my house, idling at the curb while I finish my snack, and then driving me to the show. But it’s a website: it processes a payment, and then relays the info to the venue. Some databases and a small credit-card fee. That costs pennies. Dimes, tops. Tell you what: two of my worthless drunkard friends and I will build a system that does that for $3.50 a ticket, the Fillmore can charge $7, pocket it for themselves instead of giving it to Ticketmaster, and concertgoers will still save $7.

The funny thing is, I don’t really mind paying around $40 for a concert ticket, especially to see a band as awesome as Ozomatli at a venue as cool as the Fillmore. If they just charged me one price and called it a day, I’d never be the wiser, and probably wouldn’t be writing this. But I do mind knowing that over a third of my ticket price is going to a corporation that hangs on, remora-like, to a group and a venue that I’m happy to support.

Not that the Fillmore, for all of its beauty and history, is run by a lovable bunch of ragtag promoters. The Fillmore is owned by LiveNation (née Bill Graham Presents) which recently spun off of ClearChannel, one of your more odious media conglomerates, and that’s the origin of this sweeheart deal. (I seem to be answering my own “why” question here…) Ticketmaster and Clear Channel go way back, and when LiveNation started they presumably saw no reason to change the arrangement that had kept them both in fine brandy, cigars, and baby-seal clubs.

So I guess this is my actual question: what can be done? This is a perfect example of the kind of consumer-unfriendly business practice that, were the slate wiped clean, wouldn’t stand a chance against the efficiencies that modern Internet commerce can provide. It’s a hangover from the old days, when they had to operate enormous phone systems, and have physical presences in Tower Records stores and malls across the country. We don’t need them anymore, but they’ve sunk their claws in and won’t go away.

Is there any way out?

Aram

UPDATE: A friend points out that as of last month, LiveNation may be looking to lower ticket prices and possibly ditch Ticketmaster all together. (If anyone can find a link to the actual LA Times interview, let me know–they seem to have a pretty poor archive system.)

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My experience with Target, Mervyns, Nordstrom, and Sears is that they will place you on a list after three returns without a receipt in a single year. It has also been my experience that Sears can place you on the list after one incident if the manager feels it appropriate.

Out of the hundreds of thousands of transactions I engaged in, I only saw about 10 people that were blacklisted. It was not easy to tell them they could no longer return items without a receipt. I could actually watch them go through the 5 stages of grief.

1. Denial – “There is no way I did that many returns. Try my license again as you must have typed it in wrong.”
2. Anger – “I am going to call 7 on your side if you don’t take this back!!!”
3. Bargining – “What if you just let me do this one return and I promise to never return another item as long as I live!”
4. Depression – “What am I going to do with these crappy shoes? I couldn’t even sell them on Ebay for a 1/10th of what I paid.”
5. Acceptance – “Oh fine. I am just going to have to keep my receipt from now on.”

The good news is that banning can typically be deleted at least once by calling the corporate office and requesting removal from the list. Honest people with legitimate identities are not meant to be punished. When calling, you can catch more flies with honey. Calmly explaining your reasons for the returns without receipt will get you much further than yelling at the poor operator.

The best advice is to keep your receipts for at least 90 days. You can also try the form of payment you originally used. The computers keep track of all transactions and can trace back debit, credit, check, and gift card transactions. Just try not to count on this as the computer is far more likely to remember your license number then a credit card.

Daryl

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But what if I could turn those books that I didn’t care about into books that I did? Sure, I could buy books, but that’s expensive. Bookmooch has that solved. You list the books you have that you’re willing to part with, and you seek out books in other people’s collections that you’d like to have. There’s a point system (you get a tenth of a point for each book you list, one point for each book you send off, and each book someone sends you costs a point) and all it costs is shipping between you and the person who wants the book.

It’s so simple. I’ve listed 80 books (it’s easy–they use Amazon’s catalog for book data, so you just need to enter a list of ISBNs*), shipped out 4, and have 3 on the way. The great part is how cheap it actually is. Between buying the padded mailer at the post office and shipping it at the Media rate (a special rate that’s pretty much just for books), each book I ship out only costs me about $2.50. And each of those represents a book that I can pick out later that I actually want to own.

The site feels pretty new and there are definitely some rough edges to iron out, but it’s pretty straightforward and the selection is decent (although biased towards collections like mine, it seems; for obvious reasons recent bestsellers are harder to come by.)

Bookmooch is really a pretty neat concept: a democracy of books. Each book is worth another book. You could send out the paperback of Jeff Foxworthy Scratches Himself and Tells You About It and it would entitle you to request a nicely bound copy of The Complete Unabridged Proust/Weight Training Kit. It’s one of the best recent examples I’ve seen of harnessing the power of the Internet to create more efficient markets. Money doesn’t even enter into the equation–why should it? You have a book, someone else wants that book, and you’ll get another book in return for giving it to them. Brilliant.

Aram

*That’s the unique number that each book is assigned when it’s published. Clearly marked; way easier to type than the title.

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They seem to have better, newer trucks. (I don’t have proof, but I have heard it from enough people to accept it as fact.) When you are hauling all your belongings in a 16-footer, at night, in the rain, trying to get to your new home, you don’t want your truck to break down or spin out of control. Their trucks are clean, both in the cargo area and in the front. They seem to have the best Epinions ratings for a truck company. Sure, U-Haul is supposedly cheap, but everyone I talked to told me that they got ripped off in one way or another (broken gas meter that shows a full tank when it is almost empty, poorly maintained trucks, excessive last minute charges). Penske is a little more, but at least you know exactly what you’re paying for. Plus you get $10 off if you are an AAA member.

They were nice enough to tell me what insurance I actually needed to get, instead of trying to scare me into getting it all. Apparently no one gets anything beyond just the truck insurance, which is only $20, so if you back up into a pole, you’ll be covered.

I recommend calling the local location to get a price quote and reserve a truck. That way, you can get a better feel of the level of service and courtesy that you will actually be getting in person.

Anyways, I can officially say that I never want to move again, but if for some unfathomable reason I do, I will probably go back to Penske. All in all, my move from SF down to the pensinsula was under $150 (including filling up the gas tank and getting lost multiple times). Or maybe I’ll just hire two burly men to move for me.

Sherry

P.S. Their boxes are kind of expensive, but their mattress cover is well worth it. $4 to not have squished bugs and dirt on your mattress.

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The holiday season is here once again and that means waiting in long lines just to fork over your hard earned cash. Want to shorten the wait?

The most common mistake made is to get in the shortest line or the one in which the last person in line has just a few items. The trick is to look beyond the other customers–to the cashier. Many retailers track the number of items a cashier can ring in a given time period as a way to monitor performance and look for improvement opportunities. The difference in the number of items a cashier can process in one minute can be 5 fold!

This time of year it is especially important to scope out the cashiers ahead of time to see how efficient they are. There are so many seasonal hires. A noob or a slowpoke can really get on your nerves. (Note: this method of line selection nearly always works unless you get behind the sweet old lady that is paying in pennies.)

A few other tricks:

• Ensure that all of your items have a tag to scan. If it can’t be scanned, then in most cases you can’t buy it or they have to take the time to get a tag.
• Shop early in the day. Most retailers are open as early as 5-6 in the morning during crunch time. This is the time when they are the slowest, neatest, and have the best stock available. A quick stop before work can make for an easy experience.
• Some department stores don’t have centralized checkout. In these cases, some of the hidden departments can have the shortest/fastest lines. An example is the lingerie department. This department is never as busy as the toys, clothing, or electronics departments.
• Shop online! There are never any lines (though sites can bog down due to high volume). The selection and stock status are typically better and it is easier to do price comparisons between competing retailers. Hmm… I wonder if there is a search engine that can do this…

Daryl

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