The Uniter, and Overstock Blows

So, I got a new TV for the living this past week and I've been wrestling with some issues. After a few days, the buzzing and the sparkle issues have been a little less noticeable, and for the first time ever, all of the people in our apartment were in the same room playing Super Smash Bros: Melee on the Wii. It's amazing progress for a group of people that rarely if ever came out of their rooms, but its terribly distracting. It's like going to KTYD's apartment, but every day and two feet away. Still, they're bad at SSB, so I win(and kill more) more often than not and it makes me feel better than when I lose to David after being up 3 to 1.

A quick note on the GC functionality of the Wii. Once you're in GC-mode, the Wii doesn't let you back into the Wii menu and the Wiimotes don't work. Anyone know a way around it without a hard shutdown using the console buttons?

Now, all this unity and group bonding is great, but what we're missing is still finality in keeping the TV. With all my dealings with Overstock, what ended up happening was that they weren't going to charge me for the TV, but they were going to send a guy to pick it up and delivery me the correct item. I'll quote some of the email I got to demonstrate how ridiculous their response was:

Thanks for shopping with us. I apologize for the delay in getting your Vizio 50-inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV picked up.

I would also like to apologize that this Vizio 50-inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV was received instead of the 42-inch television you ordered. I was sent a request to have the Vizio 50-inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV picked up. The freight carrier will contact you to set up a time to come by and pick that up. It will need to be boxed back up before they can pick it up. Due to this being a large item, we will need to have a large item freight carrier pick this up, but it can take up to 10 business days.

The warehouse will be delivering the correct television at the same time as picking up the 50-inch television. Please inspect the 42-inch television thoroughly before accepting shipment, including plugging in the item to make sure it is working. If you find any damage to the item, please refuse shipment, and call 800-843-2446 immediately.

Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience we may have caused. Please visit us again soon for great savings on name-brand products.

Yeah, like you're doing me some great service by taking away the one good thing that's happened to me in awhile. Saying your sorry for sending a better TV. That it's an inconvenience that I have 8 more inches. That we're sorry it's taking so long to get the return, even when I never explicitly asked for a return. Seriously, this fakeness is killing me. I hate it. And I'm worried their gonna try to take it away from me. Of course, if I don't authorize a return, can they really just assume they made a shipping error? Or maybe I was "mistaken". I don't know.

The real problem is that I won't be able to get the receipt or conformation fixed, which means my warranty with Vizio and my warranty with Overstock is pretty much null. But this one is so much better than what I was supposed to get that it might just be worth the risk...

What do you think I should do? Keep the TV, or let Overstock off the hook and get service on what I bought in the first place?

The TV From Hell

So, I've been raving about the new TV I was getting soon. A new Vizio 42" Plasma. It was supposed to arrive last week at some point, but after calling into the holding depot, they discovered that my order had been placed on hold and that they would need to call back east to find one. Great, so I wait. I called Monday to find out that the TV was in SFO and that they'd call Tuesday to deliver it. They called Tuesday to set up an appointment for Wednesday and today is Wednesday. But my TV didn't come.

No, I didn't get my 42" Plasma TV like I had hoped, I got 50" Plasma in its place. I didn't even notice until it was out of the box, on my stand, and playing pictures.



My apartment mate noticed that the model was a P50HDM, not a P42HDTV like I ordered. There was no coaxial input, no TV tuner, nothing. But to make matters worse, there was a scratch on the screen glass from a puncture hole in the box that it arrived in.



Now, I wasn't too worried about it, since I didn't want to have to ship it around again. I decided to plug it in and check it out. We turn it on, plug in the Wii and there's this monstrous buzzing sound coming from the power board and red spots flickering on the screen. Here's some screenshots of the Wii and 300.



They aren't terribly noticeable, but it's there, so with all the problems mounting, we decide to call Vizio Customer Service. After about an hour of runaround and an email with a PDF of my order receipt, they tell us they can't service it because we don't have a receipt for the right model.

What do I do now?

I call Overstock.com, notorious for their poor customer service. Actually, I used their Live Chat. I hate dealing with scumbags that work CSR (Sorry to the nice people who try to make a difference, but I know most people despise the job and what it stands for - which is not helping people so that the company makes a larger profit margin). At any rate, I mention the whole debacle and she starts quote me the return policy that's in their website FAQ. I'm telling her that I don't want to return the item, I just want a correction on the receipt to mention that I received a P50 instead of a P42. She says she'll forward it to a supervisor and that they'll email me tomorrow. Then she quotes me the price of the TV. WTF?

I'm kind of tripping out here, because I'm not prepared to pay 1500 for a refurbished television that came cracked, buzzing, a flickering out of the box when the item is definitely not what I ordered. More importantly, there's no way I'm paying return shipping for an item I don't want to send back unless I can get a better one for the same price I paid for what I wanted. So if I get an email tomorrow saying that they're going to charge me the difference, then I'm calling Visa and disputing the charge and Overstock can fight me for it...and I'll never buy from them again. And I'll tell everyone not to buy from them again as a personal vendetta. They're already bad, but my experience with them will be bar-none, the worst customer experience ever.

Gah.

I Gots Paid

I went to pick up my paycheck today. They didn't have my direct deposit set up or something, but I got the check for my 64 hours of work. Gross total of my paycheck - 677 and some change. After taxes, 604 and change. So for about 12% in taxes and medicare and stuff, I made out ok. I love being in the lowest income bracket without worrying about not having any money to go to school and paying rent and eating food.

Gonna go cash it tomorrow. Woot.

No, not that woot.

Dude, Where's My Money?

Surprisingly, I have no money. Where'd it go? I can hardly tell, but I have an idea.

Once I pay off my credit card bills, I'll have all of $20 in my checking account. I'm so broke that this is getting ridiculous. Of course, I'm getting paid back for bills, on the order of a couple hundred, and I'm getting my paycheck soon, but it's still depressing.

Part of the reason my money is gone is my buying of a TV, part of it is buying clothes that I don't really want (which I'll talk about at some other time), and part of it is not collecting debts. Sigh.

Oh well. If I'm broke, I'm broke and I'll pass on that debt to a credit card for a bit until my finances are resettled. Hopefully it won't be longer than a week...

As for my life...Midterm on Thursday. I haven't studied for it. I really should.

Video of the Week: Spiderpig!

I know, I'm about 20 hours early on this, but this is just too funny not to post up.

The Simpsons movie comes out in a couple of weeks (BTW: Harry Potter is Wednesday, and we will be seeing it on IMAX as per Maggie's instructions, so I'm forced to invite you people to go see it with us...). In order to promote the new The Simpsons Movie, Fox and 7-11 have teamed up to convert a select number of 7-11's into Kwik-E-Marts and have introduced various Simpsons themed products in their retail locations (i.e. Buzz Cola, Squishees, and Krusty-O's). The only thing missing (they even have real Apus...) is the Duff, but that's apparently because they want to target a PG-13 appropriate audience with their marketing.

While I don't have huge hopes for the movie, which I probably won't go see in the theatres (atleast for a few weeks barring reviews), I still think that this is brilliant. I've enjoyed the show for a long time and I'm happy to rediscover the magic by buying a case of Buzz and grabbing a Squishee to go.

Now if someone wants to check out the real thing, there's one in Mountain View next to the Google campus. So if someone wants to arrange a trip down there, I think it could be good fun. If not, I found some pictures that are probably worth sharing just to highlight how cool this promotion is.

Check them here: http://www.boredstop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=125&Itemid=35

Now, to the movie. This is a pretty good trailer. Deep, dramatic, comedic. And full of footprints on the ceiling. Hilariousness on a stick that must be watched over and over again. Enjoy it. Please.