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By Brian, November 15, 2006 2:11 pm

It’s the running joke of the fast-food industry: You buy a sandwich and the smiling cashier asks “Would you like fries with that?” Just as ubiquitous is an electronics sales-person offering you an extended warranty, or “protection plan” as they are commonly called.

There are many reasons they do this, but as some people have figured out – it is not for the customer’s benefit. In many stores it is a requirement of continued employment. A certain percentage of all the employee’s sales must be extended warranties, or they will be unwillingly seeking alternate employment. Often the employee (comissioned or otherwise) will get a small cash incentive added to their paycheck for each plan they sell.
The stores make a large volume of profit from these protection plans, since most of them are never actually used.

Some devices are more prone to failure or repair than others and the extended warranty is a benefit. As always, let the buyer beware – look into consumer reports or online product reviews prior to making a major purchase to get an idea of a product’s reliability instead of relying on the sales-person’s opinion. They may be experts on the product but 9 times out of 10 they have no choice but to advise you to buy the warranty.

One thing I would highly suggest you never purchase the protection-plan on is PC’s, specifically the desktop systems (laptops are more difficult and expensive to repair, it might make sense depending on the model/brand you’re looking at). Most parts can be replaced for under $100, and generally the core components will be outdated long before they fail.

Just some food for thought, prompted by this article on CBC’s website. I worked for half a decade in retail electronics sales and can attest that the volume of devices we sold vastly out-paced the volume we would recieve back under these protection-plans, which are generally priced as a percentage of the item’s purchase price.

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By Brian, July 16, 2006 10:34 pm

I went into a vitriolic rant a few minutes ago which my girlfriend was the unfortunate recipient of (sorry, hon!) and it occurred to me that this was something of a sore point for me lately.

Nearly everyone I meet gives me this dumb pie-eyed look when I explain that I don’t own a car, don’t have a drivers license and frankly have no interest in obtaining either. I’ve spent the majority of the past nine years living in Ottawa, Canada’s fourth largest metropolitan city.
The bus service is adequate for my needs, despite fare increases over the past years is still vastly cheaper than an automobile, besides which it’s healthier to walk or ride a bicycle.

According to this page by the US EPA, the average passenger car emits approximately 5,400 kilograms of pollutants per year. Since most of my travels would consist of my being the sole passenger this would be squarely on my shoulders. I’ve been hard pressed to find exact data regarding how much city bus emissions per passenger are, but the estimates I did find place it at 66% less. This means that I personally am contributing at most 1,600 kilograms of pollutants from transit. I’d like to think it’s less since I walk or cycle whenever I can do so.

Let’s factor in that gasoline sells for over a dollar a liter here in Ottawa, and automobile insurance (which is mandatory) is also a few hundred dollars a month. Cars, like any mechanical device have parts which wear out and break. They need maintenance and replacement parts. Eventually the entire vehicle may require replacement. Heck, they’re at least a few thousand dollars to obtain one in working condition, and most people I know have owned several in their lifetimes. How is this device saving me time? Most of my paycheck would go to operating and maintaining it! I can ride the bus for about a day’s pay per month. Now that’s saving me time, since at the absolute minimum I’d be losing over a week’s pay per month for the ‘convenience’ of a darned car.

I don’t need to go through several levels of testing to ride the bus, and the initial investment for a bus pass is about $10 for a photo ID. Drivers licenses take years, at least three tests, and several hundred dollars to obtain.

When I travel around on the bus, I glance out the window now and again to make sure I’ve not passed my stop. If I was driving a car, I’d have to be paying constant attention to not only my vehicle and it’s speed and heading, but all others around me including pedestrians. I’d have to watch the traffic lights, street signs, random debris on the roadway and various weather conditions which change quite often here in the capital.

I’ve actually dozed off on the bus. That’s death in a car! I can sit down, let someone else worry about these annoyances, listen to music on headphones, read a book, text message on my phone, daydream, whatever.

So, in reality I’m saving time, money, effort, stress and the environment all at once. Understandably if I lived in a less urban area it would be a different situation.

But I don’t – So why ruin my life for what would amount to merely caving to peer pressure spawned by industrial marketing?

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By Brian, May 7, 2006 12:53 pm

Canada’s primary export is natural resources – water, lumber, petroleum, natural gas, and so forth. Obviously without a focus on renewability, this will eventually run out. Big industrial corporations like CN apparently are content to expedite this – unless some lake-front property owners can’t swim in the lake. Well, then they offer $7.5M to the property owners for being unable to use the lake.

Umm, guys, the lake is filled with toxic petroleum ooze. What about whatever might have been living in and around the lake, like between the tracks and the lake? What is it going to be doing to the water supply in that area? I think $7.5M being offered as a take-it-or-leave it deal before the Alberta Environment commission has finished it’s analysis of the spill is one of those classic corporate sleaze moves like you see in the movies.

I hope this is not the direction Canada is going – destroying and selling off everything simultaneously. I’d hate to think what this country will look like down the road if that’s the case.

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