consumerism

I don’t know what to call this passport photo business, so I am just going to stick with “stupid ripoff” for now.

During the weekend, we went into a CVS Pharmacy Photo Center to get some passport/ID photos. We wanted a specific size (as they say “from chin to crown”), so we asked the dude who was attending the photo center whether he can adjust the size. Pat came his reply “No, we just print the standard 2″ by 2″ photo and we can’t adjust any proportions“.

I asked him “But, don’t you have a software where you center the face in the photograph and mark the upper and lower boundaries for the face? All we have to do is to adjust those boundaries and then we can cut the photographs to the size we want - and approximately in the proportion we want“. He didn’t seem too impressed with the knowledge and insisted that he won’t do anything other than the standard 2″ by 2″ without any editing.

So we left the shop, and wondered why the heck they charge $7.99 if they wouldn’t do anything other than click the photograph and print it. Camera rental charges or something? - perhaps they use expensive digital SLRs to get good pictures (wishful thoughts).

Anyways, we then visited a Walgreen’s Photo Center and again got the same story. Next, we again tried a CVS - a different one this time - just to see if one of these “Kodak Certified” dudes could get our photographs the way we wanted. But we met with the same disappointment at this location too.

Finally, we surrendered and asked the CVS guy to click passport sized photos for one of us. We confirmed the price and he said $7.99 for two copies - additional copies will cost extra.

We decided to try it out with two copies to start with.

While we waited for the photos to print out, I saw (with my own eyes) that the photographs were printed on a 4″ x 6″ photo paper - and there were 6 copies on it. Then the dude coolly cut away 4 copies, disposed them, and handed us the remaining two copies.

WTF!?

Man, does CVS implement this type of idiotic business at all it’s photo centers?

Plus, the photos he printed didn’t look sharp at all - pretty sure it was some crappy point-and-shoot camera that didn’t do a very good job of focusing. When we pointed that out, he was like “Oh really? don’t worry all photos printed here look like that and no one ever came back because a photo was not accepted“. Wow! that’s an awesome argument to complement a crappy service.

What’s wrong with these photo centers. Why should a passport photo - clicked by a mediocre digital camera - without any studio-type lighting arrangements - without any professional photographers, cost $7.99?

Just to be sure that I am on the right side of statistics, we checked out another CVS Photo Center and two Walgreens Photo Centers - and got similar less-than-average-quality pictures, overpriced at $7.99 for two copies - topped with a totally unprofessional approach towards clicking good photographs.

Eventually, we gave up on these photo centers and decided to make our own pictures. Bought a 2 yard long white cloth (for background) from Walmart for $2, used our digital camera, adjusted the brightness and contrast in Photoshop, used this free service that lets you size your photos according to your requirements, and printed them again at Walmart (through their online photo service).

Total cost for 32 excellent passport/ID photographs: $2 for the white cloth and about $1 for photo printing = $3 (took a little bit of time with the Photoshop editing, but we were absolutely happy with the end result).

Down with $7.99 for two crappy photos!

One of these days I am going to throw up on watching/reading testimonials from “real people”. I haven’t really understood the fundamental purpose of these testimonials. Do they really impress people into buying shady stuff? Are people really so dumb uninformed that they easily get suckered into emptying their pockets after hearing testimonials from “real people”? Do they really believe that a $50 booklet will make them $100,000 a month? or that a $59 bottle of pills will reduce their weight by 30 pounds in a month?

I don’t know how you all deal with testimonials, but for me, all links/pages/advertisements with “testimonials” are basically off-limits. There is no valuable information ever in such testimonials. Mostly it is simply fake text/speech for the purpose of self-glorification, or paid content produced by “actors” or “writers” - who don’t have anything to do with the product. I would never make a purchasing decision based on such testimonials.

Here are a few examples of some dubious testimonials that qualified for this rant.

• Ever heard of the “crazy fox” home business advertisements on TV? The whole premise of the advertisement doesn’t go down well with me. Isn’t “fox” considered a symbol for cunningness - with a definite negative connotation? Remember “cunning as a fox” or “sly as a fox”? And yet people believe an animated fox when it talks about how to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by working from home?

A good part of this foxy advertisement consists of testimonials from people who claim to have made a ton of money by following the fox’s advice. Watch these actors/liars in the video - especially how they enunciate the numbers and fake happiness:

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Feed readers click here for the video.Now, isn’t that some real furry piece of crap.

• Another noteworthy source of testimonial BS comes from well-built males and females (sometimes, with names phonetically similar to well-known actors/actresses) who swear that various parts of their bodies were shaped exclusively by various expensive exercising machines. At times, these “real” testimonials are also accompanied by morphed (almost certainly) and/or digitally remastered “before-after” photographs.

• Next, here is an example of some brash touting of “real” testimonials on www.therichpom.com:

Make Money Online - REAL Testimonials

Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before. Make money online using the Internet, Work from Home etc. It’s all a big scam isn’t it, just like this website?

DON’T THINK SO!

See below - don’t take my word for it. These are real people who have had the balls to buy my product and they have successfully made money online.

I don’t know what kind of balls one needs to tolerate such brash marketing and, and on top of that, believe in some lame testimonials like this one:

“My wife told me I’d been stupid to spend eighty bucks on some Internet ‘get rich quick program’. I told her it was a long-term thing, but even I was surprised when we had earned our rent money in the first month alone. I’m now into my third month and I have quit my job. In a word - thanks”

Quit job in the third month! Wow.. that’s awesome - and I think the dude said that in the same breath as he said “long-term thing“. I guess it’s no wonder then if stupid websites that carry such testimonials are still making money.

• Here is another money making “self-testimonial” from a rather shady website ( www.thousanddollarprofits.com ):

“That’s Me, Sitting Outside Of My Home In Hawaii. Keep In Mind I Haven’t Always Made Over $35,000 Per Week, From My Home… Not So Long Ago I Was Working As A Construction Laborer, Drowning In The Corporate Rat-Race, And Struggling To Pay My Bills. Since My Breakthrough With The ‘Reverse Funnel System’, I Now Make More Money In One Week Than I Used To In A Year - And You Could Too. I’ll Prove It…”

“I am absolutely convinced that my proven System, will create massive wealth for virtually anyone regardless of your background, education, or even your current level of income… I’m going to Prove it!”

That’s right, I have never heard of a “construction laborer” drowning in a “corporate rat race“. Plus, one just has to wonder why these folks, who make $35,000 a week, create and run some low-grade, down right dubious and cheap websites.

• Here is one that claims weight loss by listening to an audio cassette ( www.hypnosisdownloads.com ):

“I have just started educating myself on hypnosis. I downloaded ‘ Weight Loss Motivation‘ and then recorded it on a cassette and have listened to it for about 3 weeks now. I have lost 12 pounds but more importantly I notice that the choices I have been making are a lot smarter. Thank you!!”

“I would you recommend this download to anyone looking to take back control of their life!!”

If only weight loss was this simple - sit in traffic for 2 hours every day and just listen to an audio cassette many times over! Better still, I would love to see something like “Get Rich Motivation” - I will listen to it for three weeks and then claim to be richer! I will probably find something like that if I look hard enough. Sounds like the right kind of product for folks who believe in Dogbert-ism.

• Now, here is one that beats them all by a comfortable margin in terms of absolute testimonial bullshit - and it comes from www.mattersofsize.com. No prizes for guessing the subject matter under consideration:

“I Now Have 8.5 Inches!”
“You’re absolutely one of my heroes. Your inventiveness, sensitivity, and strength are inspirational, as is your progress. Thank you for giving me the 8.5” I have always dreamed of. I joined 3 other programs with no luck. I started at 6” and I tried everything from pills and weights to pumps and potions and nothing worked. After working with you over the past year my dreams have finally come true. This site was the best move you could have made. Now the world will have access to what I have had been spoiled with.”

Somebody please kill me already!

This past week, a faculty member casually asked me about my recommendation for a MP3 player for her son… so I casually asked how old her son was. “He is nine years old” was the answer!! Man.. I never felt more outdated in my life… I still don’t have a MP3 player.

Here is another example I found on Amazon forums:

Question: Best mp3 player for a 9 year old, what do you suggest?

Answer: I purchased a Samsung YP-T7J from Amazon.com last year for Christmas for my eight year old. I liked it because it isn’t so small she would forget she had it and it was easy to navigate for a child. Actually she showed me how to use it…lol.

What’s with kids (and/or kids’ parents) and electronic gadgets these days? Is the idea of having some free fun without battery powered devices becoming obsolete or something?

I am not sure if it’s a good trend (technological advancement) or a bad one (technological dependence), but whatever it is, it’s certainly much different than how things were when I was a kid, and it will certainly have some impact (again, I don’t know whether positive or negative) on the growth and development of future generations.

To put things into perspective, here are a few things my friends and I did in ancient times to “have fun” - when MP3 players were unheard of and computers were rare (or too expensive for our parents). Most activities were just plain free - and those which required some hardware, didn’t cost more than a few peanuts:

1. Skipped stones on water: Do people even remember this anymore? It involved throwing some flat-ish stones across a body of water and watching them bounce multiple times. We spent hours trying to experiment with different shapes and sizes of stones, and various throwing actions, to generate the maximum number of bounces.

By the way, according to a MSNBC report, the world record for this activity is held by Russell Byars who made a stone bounce 51 times!

2. Collected stamps, coins, comics, and all sorts of silly *collectible* stuff: Nothing I collected ever turned into anything valuable, but it sure kept me busy. Plus, except for a few bucks of initial parental contribution - and occasional raiding of my own pocket money, it didn’t cost anyone a fortune.

3. *Handwheeled* bicycle tires: I don’t know how to explain this, but *handwheeled* comes closest to what we used to do. We used to find trashed/damaged bicycle tires and then run around while rolling them alongside with our hands (or sometimes with short sticks). This was usually accompanied by weird sound effects from imaginary vehicles.

4. Played with marbles: Again, loads of fun without the need to spend a lot of money. I remember playing with them ever since I was old enough to understand that marbles are not meant to be swallowed. Most marble games were extremely simple to play, but generally used to be very competitive.

5. Flew kites: Where we lived, almost every apartment/house had a flat roof open terrace. On dry, windy days, flying kites was one of the popular activities - among the young and the not-so-young. Kite fights, if you have ever heard of them, are awesome.

6. Played with spinning tops: I have played with all sorts of tops as a kid - my favorite ones being wooden tops which were spun with the help of a long thick string. It took quite a bit of practice to get the top spinning right. Years later, I found out that this simple toy is based on one of the most complex engineering concepts.

7. Made paper toys: This wasn’t really origami or anything … just a few simple folds to make things fly or float, but it was a lot of fun. Apart from the fun part, constructive activities like these allow a lot of scope for creativity - without burning a hole in your pocket.

8. Played hide and seek and outdoor chasing games that didn’t require a dime of hardware: There must be like infinite chasing and hiding/seeking games in existence, but I don’t see kids playing them anymore. Perhaps they like their video/computer games better.

Never felt the need for electronic devices as sources of entertainment - in the form of MP3 players or video games or whatever that was available (walkman, etc.) at the time. That explains why I felt like a caveman when I heard about a nine year old kid asking for a MP3 player.

I wonder what’s going to happen a few generations down the line - when all remaining memories of these old-fashioned frugal games will be wiped out. I guess there will be some sort of a Moore’s Law effect with regards to the ever decreasing age at which children start playing with expensive electronic gadgets.

Maybe we are looking at prams with iPod connections and infant-operated GPS units for our Baby Einstiens.

Feel free to share any particularly interesting, essentially non-hitech and inexpensive activity you indulged in as a kid. Maybe we can build a global library of such endangered (or already extinct) activities for future reference.

Image credits: discovermagazine.com, www.namibstamps.com, www.edwebproject.org, www.landofmarbles.com, www.kitelife.com, www.nwce.gov.uk, www.igniteseattle.com

Very soon, I am going to add words like “sale”, “discount”, “deal”, “clearance”, etc. to the list of the most abused words in the US … right after words like “values”, “children”, and “integrity” (watch for gross misuse of the latter set of words in the upcoming political debates).

For me, the words sale or discount imply the availability of a consumer product at a price lower than it’s “regular price”. As such, it is obvious that the product should have been sold at a regular price for some amount of time, before a retailer declares a certain percentage reduction on the regular price of the product and calls it a “sale”.

For example, let us assume that a shirt (of the size I want) at a local retailer sells for $20 on most days of the year. On certain days, the retailer announces a sale, gives a 25% discount, and sells the same shirt for $15. Now this is what I call a sale.

However, I have been observing an increasing number of advertised sales that are simply useless gimmicks and just not worthy of any attention. Here are a few examples.

The Perpetual Sale

This is a kind of 24/7/365 sale - it ends on Monday night and starts again on Tuesday morning - it ends on the last day of October and starts again on the first day of November. Stuff is forever on sale. That doesn’t make any sense to me. For these perpetual sales, where is the concept of “regular price”? What is the percentage discount based on? Is it based on some arbitrary sticker price that can be easily manipulated by pasting new stickers on top of old ones? If so, then it’s stupid to call it a sale. I mean, what difference does it make to the consumers if you sell the same shirt - one day for a 50% discount and some other day for a 2% discount - if ultimately, it’s going to cost $15 to the consumer through every day of the year?

Continuing on the same note, what’s the point in selling the same shirt at a 25% discount through all days of the year? If a store needs to advertise a perpetual discount on a certain product, to me, it seems like there is a problem with the initial pricing of the product - sounds like the product is overvalued in the first place.

Another example of perpetual discount pricing is seen with pizza outlets. Every week, various pizzerias fill our mailbox with dozens of coupons announcing some new “deals”. Not surprisingly, there is nothing new with most of these coupons - every week, the same pizzas are sold for about the same price - and yet, each week it’s a “new limited time offer”.

The Urgency Sale

This follows from the “limited time offer” announcements that I mentioned above. A couple of classic examples of this type of sales are:

• “Call in the next 5 minutes and we will give you an additional 25% discount“

• “This offer is valid only if you sign this agreement right now“

• “Once in a lifetime opportunity!“

In spite of sounding stupid, such sales tactics call upon customers’ sense of urgency and usually coax them out of their money for senseless stuff (I know someone who bought a remote controlled “fart machine” for $22 under such kind of urgent persuasion).

Many television advertisements, with fake testimonials from “happy” consumers, fall in this category. These ads will run every day of the week and ask you to call in the next 5 minutes to get some additional discount.

The Useless Sale

Great! so there is a 80% discount sale in your favorite retail store. You think happy thoughts of getting all the stuff you always wanted and rise early to get to the store before all the good stuff gets scooped up. You start looking for the XL-size t-shirts that you wanted and after wasting an hour searching for them, you realize that the 80% off is only on 5XL size fluorescent yellow t-shirts with fluorescent pink sleeves! Everything else is priced higher than usual!

Sometimes, the product you want is available, but there is this only one singular piece that’s in stock and there are about 500 people who will be looking for it on the same day as you are. So, good luck on that.

The Mass Hysteria Sale

Shout “sale! sale! sale!” outside your car in just over a month from now, on the day after Thanksgiving, and you will know what I am talking about. In fact, you can start having fun a couple of days earlier if you hang around Best Buy or Circuit City.

These are just the examples off the top of my head… I am sure there are more out there.

Interestingly, since many advertisers consistently keep using such sale strategies, something must be obviously working for them. I wonder if we are getting the meanings of words like “sale”, “discount”, etc. incorrectly hardwired in our genes or something.

Notice the plastic cover on our laptop:

The laptop looks absolutely brand new under that shoddy plastic cover (which came with the original packing) and which is now old enough to warp itself out after more than a year of use - although, I am still not inclined to remove it completely.

In the past, I have done something similar with plastic covers on many other consumer products - digital cameras, watches, calculators, scientific instruments in my lab, etc.

I don’t know what the motivation is - it’s some sort of a default “frugal” behavior on my part. Maybe it’s the idea that the product will appear “like new” even after a prolonged use - sort of a “save it for later” spirit. Maybe subconsciously, somewhere in my mind I have tied the value of the product to it’s appearance. Maybe keeping the covers on really extends the life of certain delicate products. Maybe it’s just a silly habit. Whatever.

I call it “default” behavior, because it’s not really a deliberate motivation - for example, in case of the laptop, the thought of removing the cover never crossed my mind till yesterday.

Anyways, this brings up a very interesting general issue - till what point should you “save it for later”? I mean, yeah.. you can keep the plastic cover on your brand new sofa forever and preserve it’s original value well over the years, but then you may never really experience the consumerist pleasure of the *newness* of the object (isn’t that one of the reasons why people buy “new” stuff?) - not to mention the irritating crackling noise of the plastic cover.

I wonder if I have been applying this line of thought in other walks of life, without really being aware of it.

The olive oil issue returns! but this time, somebody else wants to talk about it. This post is authored by Paid Twice who writes over at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already. If you are looking for bloggers in debt, who are fighting it out and inspiring others to do the same, you should stop by her blog sometime. And yeah… forget nasty comments or be ready to get a taste of some serious kicking skills.

I have to admit, when I read the post here a few months ago about buying canola oil and a couple acting superior because they use olive oil, I was taken completely aback. Not that I would ever have some kind of attitude with someone because I use(d) olive oil, but honestly, I never knew that canola oil was as good or even better to use for cooking as olive oil . The whole post, and the ensuing comments, completely surprised me. Basically I had been buying olive oil, extra virgin olive oil no less, for years and years, thinking I was doing something good for my family (and spending a huge premium to do it) when in fact, I could have spent way less than half as much, bought canola oil, and been just as healthy.

Apparently I have been brainwashed by the likes of Rachael Ray and the majority of the Food Network into believing that extra virgin olive oil is *the* thing to use for cooking. I do not generally subscribe to the idea that expensive = better, but sometimes, it actually does equate , and I thought for some reason this was one of those instances. Now yes, I could have researched it, I could have done my own reading, I could have done many oil comparisons and figured this conclusion out for myself this. If I’d even known what to compare. I’d never really given much thought to anything other than “vegetable” oil (which in my experience generally means soybean oil) and olive oil as possible options in my oil usage.

Olive oil is just one example of a growing problem I have when trying to be frugal vs being cheap. Sometimes I feel like the world is designed to throw barriers in the way of being truly frugal at every corner. I always hear the idea of spending money for quality espoused as a frugal concept, but it is so hard for me to figure out what quality is or when quality is worth it.

I want to live a frugal lifestyle. Frugal. Not cheap. I don’t want to sacrifice the health of my family or their safety to save a buck, and I don’t want to buy the same thing ten times for a dollar each I could have bought once for five dollars. It is easy to say save money when it doesn’t matter, but spend money when it does - but for me, so hard to put into practice. I’ve overspent on things I thought were cost-justified but actually were not (see my years of olive oil usage), and I’ve underspent on other things just to be disgusted with the quality and end up with a broken something that had to be replaced (a shelving unit and a laundry hamper both immediately come to mind).

So does every single purchase, no matter how mundane, need hours of thorough research? Whose research do I trust? Where do I look for that kind of information and when do I know that the frugal thing to do is spend more money vs buying cheaply? I don’t know if there is a simple answer to that. So much of life is full of propaganda and supposed experts telling me what to spend money on and where. How do I filter out the propaganda and figure out where the real information is? More and more I’m running into this problem, with food and also beyond.

And to finish with another question about food, those of you who are in the know about oil…. what kind of oil should I be using for baking?

Here is a link to Paid Twice’s feed if you would like to have her blog in your feed reader.

“To protect your credit card against misuse, remember to sign the back of your card before you start using it” - you will hear that every single time when you call your credit card company to activate a credit card (or a debit card for that matter).

Even the Federal Trade Commission (which, by the way, goes with the tag line of “protecting America’s consumers”) highlights that as the first tip towards guarding against credit card fraud:

Sign your cards as soon as they arrive.

Exactly how is this supposed to protect the card against misuse?

Mastercard tries to explain this on it’s website with this argument:

Sign all your payment cards as soon as you get them. This way when salespeople check the signature on the back of your card against the signature on the sales receipt, you will be protecting yourself if your card is lost or stolen.

I don’t get this for many reasons:

• Salespeople hardly ever check the signatures on the back of credit cards. This is especially true with those “self-checkout” counters found at many retail stores.
• For someone who is determined to use a stolen credit card for purchases, it’s really not difficult to forge the card’s signature on the sales receipt. So, even in the rare cases where salespeople do check the signatures, it’s very unlikely that they will detect any wrongdoing without a detailed scrutiny.
• For the above reason, just cross-checking the signature on the receipt against the one on the back of a credit card is not a sufficient deterrent; ideally, the signature on the sales receipt should be verified with a more concrete piece of evidence - like a driver’s license or a state identification card. I don’t remember when was the last time a salesman asked for my driver’s license to verify a signature - I am not even sure they are allowed to do that.
• If it turns out that an additional authentication source is required to verify the signature, then I don’t see the point of having the signature panel on credit cards in the first place.

Let’s look at these drawbacks in light of a scenario in which a fraudster tries to use a credit card that’s not signed at the back.

• In this case, the person who has stolen your card can generally sign your name (or something that looks like your name) on the back of the card (your name is printed on the front of the card, so this is a no-brainer) and recreate the same “signature” on the sales receipt.
• The only difference here is that the thief doesn’t have to practice the signature on the back of the credit card - he can create an arbitrary fake signature. So yeah, it makes it a little tiny bit easier.
• Like before, a salesperson who just verifies the signature on the sales receipt with the signature on the credit card can be easily fooled.
• Again, the only way to catch such a deceit is to verify the signatures on the sales receipt and the credit card with the signature on the driver’s license. Again, the objective is to stop the fraudulent transaction - so it just suffices to verify the signature on the sales receipt with the signature on the driver’s license (or state ID) and the signature on the credit card really doesn’t matter.

To me, there really isn’t a big difference between the two cases - whether you sign it or don’t, misusing a stolen credit card (or a debit card for non-PIN transactions) seems really easy. Makes the “sign the back of your cards” message a bit moot. I don’t think it’s enough deterrent for even a *casual* credit card thief.

Interestingly, in both cases (whether you have your signature on your credit cards or you don’t), even if you enforce sales receipt signature verification through a driver’s license, all a fraudster has to say is: “Oops, I forgot my driver’s license at home“, and he/she can easily walk away from the situation and try the scam on the next retailer.

One good piece of advice on this issue comes from The Straight Dope:

You should believe me, as I have worked in retail, for a company that issues its own credit cards. Here’s our official advice on signing the strip on the back: Don’t sign it. It’s useless as a deterrent, as anyone who takes your card then has a sample of your signature which they can not only use on any charge slip, but on your checks as well. However, do not leave the white strip blank. In that space, write: “Ask For Picture ID,” and be prepared to back that up someday when you’re in a hurry and the clerk wants to see a driver’s license as well as the card. It makes the charge transaction a little longer, but a lot safer.

Again, this point is moot if the salespeople don’t check the back of most credit cards in the first place - you can write whatever you want in the signature panel, it’s not going to make a difference if no one ever looks at it. However, in spite of this singular loophole, writing “Ask For Picture ID” may be the best thing you can do right now - while we wait for a better security measures (or other tricks as suggested by people who comment on this post).

I am not sure, how this issue can be effectively tackled in future, but printing photographs on the front side of credit cards might be one way to address it. Your signature stays safe and away from thieves, and your face provides instant “authentication”.

~$$~

Before you go, here is an excerpt from a funny story on this issue on Zug.com:

The manager, a guy about my age with a ponytail and a goatee, came over to see what was wrong. They exchanged some hushed words, and then he rang through my purchase again. “Can you sign the screen, please?” he asked. This guy was serious.

Again I signed NOT AUTHORIZED to my $16,800 Circuit City credit card payment.

“What is that?” he asked.

“That’s my signature,” I said.

“You can’t sign it NOT AUTHORIZED.”

“Why not?”

“Because you need to sign your name.”

“Well, I recently changed my signature,” I said hopefully. “It now looks a lot like NOT AUTHORIZED.”

“It’s got to match the back of your card,” the manager said.

“Oh,” I said. “No problem.” I took the card back from him and wrote NOT AUTHORIZED on the back of my credit card. I had heard that this trick sometimes works, but this guy was too smart for me.

“No, no,” he said as I started writing. “That doesn’t count.”

“It’s never had to match before,” I said. “No one has ever cared.”

Click here to read the rest of this prank.

I first came across this advertisement in the latest issue of TIME magazine - splashed across the inside front cover with the title “The World’s First $10.5M Cell Phone - an exciting limited-time offer for billionaires.”

The ad proceeds to claim this:

“Purchase this BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone for just $10.5 and we’ll throw in a private island to develop as you see fit. It’s the one accessory that says “I control my own island. And I have a smartphone”

Owning an island!? How exciting!! .. so I checked their website for more details on the deal :

Notice the little “Select method of payment” button for instant funds transfer - gives “Swiss Bank Wire Transfer” as an option! Yeah… right.. that’s super convenient!

Even the disclaimer has a teaser in it:

There is no way we could sell a commodity as precious as an island on a site that just anyone could access.

If you are in fact a billionaire and you’re still interested in purchasing an island, our broker would be happy to help you find one.

The only thing that killed my hopes was this qualification condition:

“Island Offer ONLY available to the wealthiest 100 people on planet Earth.”

Could I qualify as a “subprime billionaire” or something, could I?

May be I am too dense in my head.. but what exactly is the purpose of this ad? It’s not even April 1st. Was this supposed to be funny or something? Should I be laughing after reading this ad… or what is it?

May be it was just a slanted remark on Americans who would really be willing to buy a phone BlackBerry for $10.5 million in hopes of getting something bigger for “free”.

Whatever.

Man.. I desperately wanted that island. Can I sue them for raising false hopes and making misleading marketing claims ?

We have been hearing about the recalls of “Made in China” toys, due to the presence of lead, for quite some time now. Each time this lead contamination issue is raised, fingers immediately start pointing towards the lack of quality controls on the Chinese end, and the blame falls squarely on the manufacturing facilities in China.

In light of this, I found the following statements by a contract manufacturer in China very interesting (source: BBC). According to the manufacturer, the root cause of substandard “Made in China” products lie in the cost cutting pressures imposed by western customers (companies who outsource manufacturing to Chinese contractors). Here are a few juicy excerpts from the article:

There are many contract manufacturers in China, just like my company, and they get all the blame for the low-quality of Chinese-made products. But that is not correct.

As an export director, I have personally experienced pressure to reduce costs by hook or by crook or lose big contracts that are vital for the survival of our company.

We, as contract manufacturers, get the material, apply the paint and prepare everything for mass production. But if the big brand comes back to us and asks us to cut costs, our only option is to compromise on materials.

We know that quality gets compromised. Our customers [the big brand companies] know it too.

We employ 5,000 people in our company. A contract ensures the survival of our business. If we don’t get a contract we lose our jobs and we can’t provide work for our workers.

Of course we’ll use cheaper paint if we have to.

Then when there’s a problem, the responsibility is passed down to the small guy. He speaks no English, he has no internet and no website - he has a workshop in a corner of a street, trying to make a living.

So now we know where it all begins.

Of course, after all the furore, laws will be passed and obvious dangers will be taken care of (where they are most easily visible) - but that’s not going to stop western companies from pressurizing for lowering the manufacturing costs. The lead contamination problem may stop soon (hopefully), but then, something else will take it’s place and the cycle will continue till the root causes are addressed.

Let’s see if a short “Why” analysis might point us in the right direction.

Why do Chinese manufacturing contractors use cheap lead-based paints?

• Because, they want to keep the costs as low as possible and still maintain certain degree of profitability.

Why do they want to keep costs down to the minimum?

• Because their western customers are threatening to rescind their contracts in the absence of heavy discounts.

Why are the western customers (our beloved corporations) putting so much pressure on the Chinese manufacturers for cost cutting?

• Hmm.. it becomes interesting here. Think about it.