Standard Mischief

Thanks to Tuan the Clueless Ebay Seller’s failure to deliver, I was still in the market for a busted PDA with (hopefully) a good motherboard, so I can build myself a Frankenstein PDA.

Yea, I could just go buy a new one, but Palm sucks, they build overpriced crap with lousy warranties. They don’t make products for me, I want a PDA that’s built like a tank, has a two year, no questions asked warranty, and that superb repair exchange system that won me over to Palm in the first place. With a great warranty like that, I’m willing to pay $300-400, but with the service they give now, if I get a new PDA, I’ll have to buy two, just so I’m never without a spare.

Luckily, if all you really need is something to keep your contacts, appointment, and to-do list in, any of the m series (m100, m125) work just fine. The memory capacitor is usually dead, so you will have to hotsync before every battery change, but that’s only a minor nuisance. I do, however, really like my Zire’s ?James Bond? stealth camera, and I’m willing to do a little work to get it back.

I scored a cheap PDA on ebay, but the seller doesn’t accept Paypal. Now I use Paypal to pay small sums of money, but with all the Paypal horror stories out there, I blame no one for not accepting it. I had two realistic options, Bidpay, and a money order.

Now Bidpay would have been faster, but I just thought I’d get a 90 cent money order, and stick 60 cents on an envelope and be done with it. I’m in no hurry. Silly me.

The first problem was that the postal office wouldn’t take my credit card. It wasn’t my credit that was the problem, but the fact that I was trying to buy a money order with a credit card. Apparently there is a lot of fraud.

The second problem was that Shoppers Food Whorehouse, down the street, doesn’t accept credit cards for the purchase of a money order either.

Now both of these places will take debit cards, but not credit cards. Debit cards are a rotten deal for consumers for several reasons:

1. You don’t get the float (free loan of money) that you get with a credit cards.
2. You can’t contest a purchase, like you can with a credit card.
3. If the card is lost or stolen, someone can use it exactly like a credit card except that’s your money getting sucked out of your account.
4. The limit for liability on a debit card is $500 instead of $50 for credit cards. Frequently banks will wave even that.
5. If you are a member of the elite few who still realize that you are spending real money, and you don’t overspend on credit, and you pay your full balance off every month (I highly recommend auto-pay), you can actually earn money when you “flex” your cards. I get 1% off the top in cash every year for using my card. Try that with a debit card.

My standard practice is to not let my bank give me a debit card. Since I have good credit, I insist on a ATM card that is useless without the PIN if stolen.

So I had to run to the ATM, big deal. I get back in line at the Postal Monopoly and give the nice bureaucrat behind the counter my standard mischief line, “so, how many kinds of ID do I need for cash”?. I get my money order, and run smack dab into my third problem; The money order is worthless outside the United States, but my seller is located in our sister nation to the north, Canada. I don’t figure out this right away though, no, Standard Mischief has left the building first. That means I have to make a third trip to the Postal Monopoly.

Returning back a third time, I point out to the nice bureaucrat that NAFTA has passed, and my money order ought to be honored on the other side of the longest undefended border in the world. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. You see, NAFTA is for corporations, and it lets those artificial person thingies (that have more rights than real people) move jobs and money overseas to avoid taxes and get the best rate on labor. It doesn’t do squat for ordinary people like you and me. The overlords get somewhere between a third and half of my income through taxes, fees, and miscellaneous BS, but obviously I’m not paying them enough for them to put any sugar in the Uber-Treaty for me.

So even though she sold me a defective product, she can’t or won’t let me return it. I’m forced to cash it, thereby losing my 90 cents, and this time buy the special orange money order (for only $3.25, what a bargain).

I’m gonna drop this thing in the mail and start to pray. I’ve just realized I’ve just given the ideal chance for two different nations’ Postal Monopoly an opportunity to royally screw up.