This was kind of interesting. There was a scenario where a person is moving into another household where everyone will sign up under one big package to save money. Imagine say five people getting a phone line each from a bundle as opposed to each person signing up for their own packages which would be more expensive.

The roadblock was that the person was interested in keeping their old number when they move. When they inquired about this from the provider they said that it wasn’t possible as they would have to just transfer the account to the new address. Hence, the person would have to be billed separately with their own package.

To me this made no sense as I was thinking you could technically signup with a different provider who would allow you to keep your old number at the new address. Then if you really want to go back to the old provider you can just ask that this number be taken from the competitor as you resign up with them. Sure enough, you could do it this way which made them wonder why they couldn’t just avoid the hassle in the first place and just directly port the number over.

It looked like it was simply one of those situations where the person working at the customer service just got a little lazy. Kind of interesting that you need to give people examples like these at times to make them realize that what you are requesting shouldn’t have to cost you more money or that it is impossible otherwise.

Recently as you all know I was given a new credit card as a result of some kind of potential security breach over various credit card data. Today I was given a new debit card for a particular bank as similarly something happened with the card data.

It was kind of interesting I thought too as for this bank I usually only deposit money into it. I never use it to make purchases and so there is no way someone could have potentially gotten any information that way. It is a little repetitive having to activate all of these new cards. But I guess it is better for the long run as it is better to be safer than sorry.

I was looking at this list of companies that sold a particular item as on the manufacturer’s page it listed who the authorized dealers were. Not surprisingly there were some stores that I never even heard of as these are the smaller businesses compared to the large retail chain stores. It was kind of surprising to see how much cheaper certain items were at the smaller places.

That made me think of how this is a great way to scope out deals for other items too where you can simply find all of the local dealers through the manufacturer’s site and then use that as a base find the best deals. I think most people would normally not even know that these stores even exist since smaller business can’t always afford to pay for a space in high traffic areas.

I did this once before when a friend was looking to buy a TV that was in the range of $5000+. All I did was go to the company’s site, looked up the list of resellers that the company provided and not surprisingly I found a place that was selling the item for about $500 cheaper.

Today I went to the mall as I was trying to research about the price and availability of a certain item. Since I did all that traveling it kind of seemed wasteful to not buy something and so I was thinking if there was anything that I justifiably needed to buy. I was then thinking that the dress shoes I was wearing were a little bit worn out in the front and so maybe buying a new one would be too bad of an idea.

But the other side of me was saying it may be a little worn out, but for the most part it was still an acceptable quality where I can use it daily. Therefore, it would seem like a premature purchase that will simply drain my money. I just have a habit of using things until they are unusable whenever possible. Even if they are worn out I would try to find ways within reason to keep it going.

Unless you are talking about something that poses say a health issue for not replacing it. But in those cases I would consider that as unusable too.

Funny comment I received today as a person who I was working with on a project saw that I was using a cell phone that is about three years old which does not have the latest features that you would see in a more current phone. He immediately commented by saying that it was time for me to get an iPhone. I then responded by asking why I would want to get that just to spend more money? Sure enough, there was no real answer to that.

While granted I am still in the market for a new one, this is almost like peer pressure spending for adults I thought. Imagine how much money a year you would waste if you ended up buying things like this simply because people say you should have it since so many others do. For myself it usually takes me a good week of thinking before I ever plunge into a purchase like that. This gives you time to make sure that you are buying it truly because you want to as opposed to hype or pressure from others.