My Existence

So, as the title says I got a 37″ LCD for $580 from www.woot.com!  I am now in a moral dilemma.

I got my FedEx tracking number and signed up for e-mail updates and tracking exceptions.  The monitor was bought Thursday, October 9th shipped on the 14th and Saturday the 18th I got an update from FedEx saying “Damaged, handling per shipper instructions” - which is to return shipment to them.  I hop online and sure enough, it is updated as such!  I would then be refunded and at that point, unable to purchase another one due to the nature of how woot operates.  They sell one item a day until it sells out or it hits 10pm CST, 11pm EST.  So I was looking at a refund, and then being unable to get a really good deal!

I e-mail woot and inform them what FedEx has updated my shipment as and inquire as to what is going to happen, hoping they maybe had some reserve stock and I would get luck.  I know they are closed on weekends so I don’t expect a reply.  While I am on their website, I check out what others have said about their shipments and learn a lot of people have received damaged boxes but the LCD is good to go.
I called FedEx and inquired, I was told by Kimberly it was damaged “in transit,” or in the shipping biz “We ran it over, threw it across the room, dropped it from ten feet and ran it over again for good measure!,” and that it was being returned to the shipper, which is their instructions per the shipper if something like this happens.  Really bummed out now, cause I was going to have to accept a refund and I don’t think it’s fair, I went back to woot.com and posted a mature reply, saying I think FedEx should be held responsible.  They damaged it, they owe me a monitor.  Simple.

As I am reading the posts about this monitor, a LOT of people say their shipment arrived and the packaging is just horrendous.  Crushed cardboard, open tops.  Ripped box, but the monitor is perfect and working!!  I keep reading and two people mention dents on the top, from where the box was open.  One person also says theirs has been returned.  I think about that for a few and call FedEx back, once again inquiring and being a little more forceful.  I asked if I can swing by the station and look at it, citing a lot of people have been saying the boxes have been really badly damaged, but the item itself is good.

I get put on hold while the Rep, Kim, calls local station and talks to a manager.  He gets back to me almost TEN minutes later with the local station on the line and the lady in NH says I can either agree to take delivery or it is being shipped back.  Well, to keep a longer story short-ish.  I go check it out.  The box is considered “damaged” for ONE top flap being RIPPED.  The rest of the box is in near perfect condition.  Certainly a LOT better than I had been reading about online.  I accept the monitor, go home plug her in and it is still working beautifully!!  I took a ton of pictures as I was removing it from my car, unpacking and setting it up.  Just in case it dies on me or something.

Today, I get an e-mail from Jordan at woot saying “I apologize that your package was damaged.  Since we no longer have any replacements to send you, I have refunded your purchase in full.  Thanks for Wooting!”  I blink and read it again, forgetting I had sent my original e-mail.  I check the tracking number, it shows delivered and signed for so I am really confuzed as to why I was refunded.  Don’t they double check these things???  So, my dilemma by this point should be rather obvious…

Do I hope they don’t realize their mistake and never ask me for the money back, or do I do the right thing and let them know I have the monitor?  I’m really torn on this.  They made a mistake, someone clearly didn’t follow through and I have a strong “If they screw up it’s their loss” attitude when it comes to businesses.  I certainly was NOT trying to deceive them, I can provide a timetable of everything I did and in what order to prove I was not trying to scam anyone or get it for free.  I can also show in the tracking number where it shows as being signed for.  Now if I was to be contacted and asked if I got the monitor, and I were to lie to them about not getting it, I would be in the wrong and trying to scam them and deceive them and be “the bad guy.”

But what if I just stay silent and not say a word?  Can I do that?

“Feds” cut interest rate by .5% to lower it to 1.5% stocks bounce up….and then back down again!  OMGWTFBBQ?!?

Hellooooo?  There are STILL PEOPLE PLAYING THE STOCK MARKET, that is what it is there for isn’t it?  To create a whole bunch of UNNECESSARY JOBS, for the whole purpose of not moving around a lot of stocks and money.

Of course stocks are going to sell like hotcakes once they go back up, because you have people who are buying them cheap and selling them high to make a profit.

Why are the markets ignoring this obvious ploy?  A better question is why are the markets improving on BELIEFS?!  Some speculators say “If the Feds do this or that” and people jump for joy and everything is right as rain, to borrow a phrase.  But then then same speculators will say “It’s going to be a bad day for…” and it’s the end of the world.

How about we get rid of the speculators and just let the chips fall where they may?  The markets SHOULD NOT be so influenced by mere OPINIONs, regardless of who they come from.  That right there, tells me way to many people are playing the stock market in an attempt to get rich fast, and that is another reason why we are in this downward spiral.

It’s like advertising….instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and commercials…why don’t you simply improve the product?  In this day and age, people are going to buy what they buy…there is NO WAY to prove your advertising works!  Even with surveys, people are always going to answer the questions how they feel the surveryor wants them to be answered, so the results are going to be skewed!  Advertising is like the econmy sinks in MMOs, it is just there to keep things in check.  In the real world, I don’t believe it is necessary!

Bad decisions are made managing money, resources. You spend more than you make, you wrack up debt and bills. You end up losing your income entirely or it is lessened to the point where you can no longer make payments. If this is an ordinary citizen of the United States, you have few options. You can deal with the credit card companies and the banks and debtors and try to make deals, but you are basically SOL.

If this is big business, you go crying to the government and get the option to sell them your bad decisions. With no restrictions, coaching, or penalties on doing it again!?!??!?!??!?!? What is wrong with this picture? Let me paint you something from [url=http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/08/politicians.meltdown.aig.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview]this article here, [/url] “Days after it got a federal bailout, American International Group Inc. spent $440,000 on a posh California retreat for its executives, complete with spa treatments, banquets and golf outings, according to lawmakers investigating the company’s meltdown.” Lack of morality.

Or what about [url=http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/06/news/companies/citi_wachovia/index.htm?postversion=2008100709]this one here?[/url] “Under a Wells Fargo-Wachovia merger, Wachovia Chief Executive Robert Steel and other senior executives would receive golden parachutes worth $225 million, Citigroup said in the complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court. They would not receive this “windfall” under the Citigroup deal.” Greed.

YO AMERICA, WAKE THE FRACK UP!! This goes out to Obama, McCain, Bush, “Easy Street,” Wall Street, Washington and MOST importantly, Main Street. We have allowed these fools from top to bottom to mess with us and tell us what is or is not right. Our Congressional leaders and Senators who WE elected because THEY are suppose to be working FOR US! Americans said no to the Bailout, why did it happen if the people WE put in office are doing what WE want them? Cause they aren’t, and haven’t been for tens of years. Politicians no longer work for the constituents. They work for themselves. They work for the lobbyist groups that pay, excuse me.. donate, to help put them into office. Ulterior motives.

We have top executives on a $440,000 retreat, the same executives that were “responsible” for the well being of a company. It doesn’t matter if they were not the ones making the decisions. If the chain of command was working as intended, these problems would not have happened in any company, including our own government. They should be HELD RESPONSIBLE for the actions they took, or the actions they allowed to happen by NOT DOING their jobs!!

We have Wachovia executives who NOW want to go after a NEW deal, after already ironing one out with another company. Why? So they can get some more money! That is the basics of it, NO other reason. Even if they struck that part of the deal, it is to late for me to trust them at their word.

And then we have us, the regular Schmo. We need to speak up. We need to be heard. We put these people into office, and the way our government is suppose to work is they are working FOR us. So why aren’t they doing that anymore? We have become complacent with that fact, and I think we need to change it. We need to SEPARATE big business from politics, once and for all. We need politicians who are going to vote for what is best for the people, not their pockets and certainly not for businesses who made BAD decisions.

I realize there are a lot of intricacies of politics and business I certainly skipped over, but those same businesses have made it where a politician feels they NEED their money to get anywhere. If we have politicians who start turning down offers, or even better…accepting them and STABBING them in the back, I think that would send a message. I think that is what it would take to start us government on the right track. Cause this once great nation is going to be swallowed whole by another country one day and it could be soon.

We are so worried about Terrorism, but we don’t stop to think that some of the actions and decisions made by big business in this country COULD be and SHOULD be considered terrorism. Try manufacturers of tobacco products, how about the oil companies? We have companies selling a product that kills people, has been proven to GREATLY increase the chance of a medical condition that can kill people. Yet it is ok?? We have restricted guns, narcotics, it is illegal immoral and just plain wrong to kill another person……but we have companies making a profit off doing the same…exact….thing. I think that should be considered a terrorist threat. Is that an extremist view, yeah prolly. But isn’t it the view we should be having right now? Our whole system of based off checks and balances, if one thing gets to far out of control, we are suppose to compensate and respond accordingly. I don’t think my response is out of proportion, at all.

Wake up America, for we have been building our own coffins for a long while, and it seems we just added an assembly line to the production que.