Retailer Privacy Complaints

I always ask retailers to not email or mail me promotions and continue to communicate with me after the sale. Unfortunately, they don't always listen, and sometimes they really mishandle my personal contact information. Here are a few instances where the retailer didn't listen:

1. I purchased a gift for my fiance from Victoria's Secret and had the item shipped to my office. I then started to receive copies of "Ladies Home Journal" address to me at my office. I am a male, and I was very disappointed with Victoria's Secret when this happened.

2. I bought a keyboard from Guitar Center years ago, and have continued to get junk mail from them as well as free copies of "Guitar" magazine for several years. While not a big deal on its own, the problem was exacerbated by the fact that I emailed them, called them, and wrote to them requested removal from their mailing lists. Nevertheless, they continued. I will never shop there again.

3. I recently made a purchase from CompUSA.com. They sent me an email requesting that I fill out a review for the products I bought. They didn't even offer me the ability to stop communications like that, so I simply wrote back asking them to not send me any more emails.

4. Commission Junction continues to send me emails, and when I login to their site to turn off emails (thats what the email instructs me to do if I do not want to receive them), I am unable to do so. Whenever I submit the form turning off emails, the form returns an error, saying I must be subscribed!

If you are a retailer, make sure your customers can easily let you know when they want to end the conversation. Otherwise they may never speak with you again!

Annoying furniture store commercials!

Some furniture commercials are incredibly annoying.

* Bob's Discount Furniture
* Bernie and Phil's
* Jordan's Furniture

Why do these companies have such annoying commercials? I guess because it sells. Back in the day furniture stores would have "going out of business" sales every week. Haha that would probably get annoying too!

Staples.com just lost a sale.

Argh. You'd think Staples.com would get it right. They do a great job on most things, but I've seen their website go down before, and now it is totally fouled up. Everything works except for when I get to the secure checkout page. There must be something wrong with the div tag positioning, because the page is blank, and at the bottom of the page I can see the top of what should be displayed. I have no patience for that so I cancelled my order. And since I'm not on their payroll I won't bother telling them about it.

The problem images:

iTunes

Check it out, iTunes is my music player. I use it for listening to music of course, but also listening to podcasts, like the Archie Comics and ESL podcast

While I'm not crazy about the iTunes store, I do like the iPod integration. I'm never a fan of any closed, proprietary formats. However, Apple does allow using mp3 instead or their own AAC. That's why I don't like the Apple store, they only sell songs in the AAC format.

I bought my fiance an iPod mini awhile back, and we also just bought her a new MacBook. Now, she's loaded some of her music onto her iPod mini and its working out great.

You can download your own copy of iTunes for either Mac or PC here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/.

Impressed by Valvoline - A Review of their Oil Change Service

Awhile back there was a thread on FatWallet and SlickDeals about rebates for Valvoline oil. I bought the oil from Autozone to change it myself, but also noted that they have oil changing services too. News to me.

A few months later, I got a coupon on the back of a receipt from the grocer for $10 off a Valvoline oil change. This month, being in a rush I decided to give it a try. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The service was prompt courteous and got the job done right.

At $32.99 the price is a little high, but with the coupon it came down to $22.99. I'll go back if I can find another coupon!