Ugh DH, king of the upsells

[wnissen]

This was a funny thread, I love the $7 warranty on the $12 item.

The issue is not one of control, as some posters have claimed, but rather that upsells are far and away the worst deals you can make. Best Buy makes pennies on a computer, if you buy it by itself, but the extended warranty is almost pure profit. You can pretty much guarantee that anything they offer you at the last second is a ripoff.

My favorite example is from our Mazda 6. We found a new, bottom-of-the-line 2003 model for sale at an unusually low price (advertised as only 3 at this price) and bought it. They tried so hard to upsell, trying to get us to spring for the automatic transmission, or the sport package, etc. We didn't want any of it (actually, the Mazda standard equipment is very good: keyless entry, CD, AC, etc.). I understand from their perspective that the advertised price is a teaser to get you on the lot, but we didn't let them sway us. Finally we are talking with the last guy, the one who signs all the paperwork, and he trys to upsell us on the extended warranty. It's only $30 month, he says, for a 7 year warranty. Not bad, right? Well, the manufacturer's warranty is 5 years, so it's really only 2 years of additional coverage, but you're paying that $30 every month for 5 years! The cost ends up being $900 per year of actual coverage!

Buddy, if I thought I was going to need $900 of repairs in the 6th year of ownership, there is no way I would be buying the car in the first place! We did negotiate an extended warranty for our other car for less than a third of the price per year that also included roadside assistance, so we could cancel our AAA..

 

[ExPirateShopGirl]

Just hope your Borders doesn't go out of business! Ours did. Now it's going to become a TJ MAxx. Gross.

It is not about the money. I don't care that he bought two books at Borders. Does it annoy me a little bit that he just won't order them off Amazon especially when we have free prime shipping? Yes, but whatever. And if our Borders wasn't a little crappy mall Borders with the nearest "real" borders over 50 miles away I wouldn't have minded that so much either. It's just....he gets duped every time. And yup, when he is doing me a favor by picking up the pictures that I budgeted and planned for and spends an extra $25 for more copies of the same pics that we don't need (that surprise, 2 of the 3 pics are still sitting in the envelope he brought them home in because how many copies of the same picture can I hang up in the house?) Same with the oil change - doing me a favor by going, I send him with a coupon for a $15 oil change and he comes back with a $35 one, I get annoyed. Once again, it is not the money, it is spending the money on things we don't need.

 

[PHXscuba]

OP, I feel your pain. You go to a lot of work to get a great deal -- research, coupons, calling around, etc., only to see your DH not only pay retail, but MORE. I agree that it's not just the money, it's feeling taken and undervalued. I agree with a PP that every couple needs to have rules about what amount or type of purchase triggers a step back or a consultation before buying. When we were starving students, it was $20, now it's up to a couple hundred before we get each other's OK.

My DH is pretty good about not falling for the extended-warranty ploy, but he is notorious for driving around just to check a price or see if the store has something in stock. He has a Blackberry -- he could so easily look the item up online or at least call to ask a price or stock availability. At $3.75 per gallon, it's just wasteful.

As for the bookstore card, I live within walking distance of a Barnes and Noble and still don't have a membership card. I rarely buy books lovestruc the library), and when I do I buy them from Amazon or the local used bookstores. There's no way I'd spend $250 in a year at B&N, so it wouldn't be at all worth it for me.

PHXscuba

 

[bumbershoot]

The bummer of going with synthetic is that now you kinda need to continue with it. With synthetic you can be, in DH's words, a bit harder on the car. If you switch back to normal oil, you lose all those benefits, and if you switch back to synthetic you can't immediately go back to being "harsher" on the car (need to wait around 3 more oil changes to get the benefits "back").

DH was a mechanic and service writer. We ARE using synthetic in our car and it's been great.



I'm the budget person in the household, and I know very well how easy it is to just not care about $20 here, there, suddenly everywhere, and HUNDREDS have been accidentally spent in a month. In our household it *had to* go to a zero tolerance house for spending little bits of money. He and I each have a very very small monthly allowance, and he does have to stick to it.



I will say that picking up pictures and resisting the hardsell is nearly the hardest thing to do, LOL. I'm a little superstitious about pictures and I will not go back to Picture People because they print all these gorgeous pictures (and put them in frames!) and bring them out to you...you now they'll just be trashed if you say no, but dangit I was only there for the FREE 8x10 and that's IT...hardest thing, to say "no" to pictures like that...

 

[IDoDis]

Hopefully he'll get his money's worth on that card. I wouldn't buy one at this point. Border's days are numbered. They are a sinking ship. Eventually the whole chain is going to go belly up. Since they got into the e-reader market way to late (and don't even have their own trademark e-reader), they are never going to last. I give them 6 months tops.