Keiser Graphics

Well a couple of nights ago I was watching American Idol. My husband was walking by to get a coke (I’m not supposed to say I made him watch it with me) and he notices that Randy Jackson is wearing a huge watch. I’m putting a picture here where Randy is clearly very proud of his huge watch. Unfortunately It doesn’t come any smaller than this and I’m not sure I like that ad right there, though it’s not like I have enough readers to be selling ad space anyways. I began to wonder why anyone would ever want such a paper weight on their arm and it occurred to me! I don’t need glasses!

I’m going to be rich with this idea. It’s a product for everyone in denial about their eyesight. It’s several products. I’ve already come up with prototypes! All I need is to get Billy Mays to yell about it and I will sell millions.

Order now and get all three devices for 2 easy shipments of 19.95$ plus shipping and handling. PATENT PENDING, PATENT PENDING.

I know you may have come here to see my “I don’t need glasses” idea come to life. But alas a real life event happened in regards to one of my other posts, so the “I don’t need glasses” will have to wait till next week.

So I recently got an email from a Manager of Communications at Charter regarding my previous post about the awesome items I could redeem my points for in the “Live it With Charter Program”. Apparently there were some features that I missed. So I went to check them out. First there is a catalogue where you can buy stuff at a discount with real cash and a few points. Points are worth five times as much here according to charter. I quickly went to see if there was anything I wanted as I have finally convinced my husband to ditch our cable for Fios and Tivo. So I have till Tuesday to spend these points. There seem to be some decent items here, but I was wondering if there really was any discount, so I started some comparison shopping from Live it With Charter to Amazon.com.

I started by looking at things that would cost me out of pocket less than $25. First I looked at a Lexar 256MB Memory Card from Charter was $17.48 plus 155 points. Normally I would add in the costs of points, but today I’ll ignore it since I got my first 3,000 points for free. The cost of the same memory card from Amazon: $7.64. Unless I get a lobotomy it doesn’t look like I’ll be buying this from the charter site. Let us compare a few other items under $25. How about a Farberware 2-Qt. Whistling Tea Kettle in Red for $18.48 and 164 points. Amazon has the newer Farberware model for $18.99. So I can buy the older model for 50 cents less than the newer model. I tried the celstron 8×21 upclose binoculars at $18.16 and 161 points. At Amazon: Again like the Farberware a much newer nicer model for $20.00. I’m starting to see a trend in the under $25 group. It all looks like stuff that possibly a liquidator bought 1-3 years ago and is still trying to sell at the prices this stuff was at 1-3 years ago.

I figured I’d try price comparing a few higher ticket items. Now note there are a ton of items on the Charter store and I have no intentions of sitting here all day looking at all of them. So I’m just going to pick a few randomly that I might like to purchase either for my self or as a gift for one of my friends/loved ones. I like cameras and have wanted a new one for a while. On Charter the Camera I wanted costs too many points, but it is the Canon 10.1 Megapixel Digital Camera with 18-35mm Lens in Black at $515.75 and 4584 points. At Amazon: $609 with an accessory kit. Though with that points cost after my free 3,000 points I would have to spend another $150 to get that Camera, and the one from Amazon is a better deal at that point. I then looked at golfing stuffs as my father in law likes to golf. From Charter: A Callaway Big Bertha Stand Golf Bag Carrier in Black $104.26 and 926 points. From Amazon: $100, so not only am I paying more at Charter, I also have to pay points on top of that. Last I checked for a camping tent as my husband and I would like to go camping. From Charter: Coleman 9′x7′ Sundome Tent $39.27 and 349 points. From Amazon: $69.99. So after spending an hour looking around on this stupid store, I finally found one thing that was actually a deal to buy. When my husband wakes up I’ll ask him if we can purchase the tent. As these points will turn into a pumpkin come Tuesday.

There was a charter mall, that if I shop at other stores I get points for dollars spent there, roughly 4 points per a dollar. But as we have seen from my previous post, the redeemable rewards are not really worth it. I can get special discounts at image.com, but most printing places already give these special discounts without any affiliations. For example Vista Print is always offering free printing and you can get your picture on all kinds of stuff like mugs, magnets, tee-shirts, etc. I have my picture on everything at home so my husband can tell what is mine and what is his. There is a link from the Live it With Charter sight to play games on GSN. Note to Charter, MSN Games are much better and they too are free.

Last with the Live it With Charter program there are sweepstakes. Currently there is a sweepstakes to win the ultimate “man cave”. As a woman I find the sweepstakes name retarded. It does have a decent prize, pretty much a huge entertainment center for your home and $500 in home depot cards. It costs 2000 points to enter. So if I spend $200 at Charter then I can enter one of there sweepstakes. This doesn’t seem entirely on the up and up to me. I know that it is illegal to hold sweepstakes in the U.S. that requires people entering the sweepstakes to pay money or purchase anything to be in the sweepstakes. I guess Charter is circumventing the legalities by converting those dollars into points and then using the points for the sweepstakes. Since I have to use up my points by Tuesday I’ll probably enter, as clearly there isn’t much else worth spending my points on in the Live it With Charter program.

The other day in the mail I received an offer from Charter Communications to join their “Live it With Charter” club. It is basically a point reward system like many credit cards. It was free and I would get 10 points for every dollar I spent with charter. I thought to myself this might be nice since I pay too much for cable anyways. In case you are wondering I pay roughly $90 every month for all the normal channels, HD channels, and DVR. Now I have to buy some channels twice because Charters HD channel line up pretty much sucks, the only HD channels worth anything from Charter are the Discovery channels, the rest of it is lifetime, bravo, tlc, and crap like that. So in order to have the Sci Fi channel I have to buy it in regular format and it comes with lifetime, bravo, tlc and crap like that. So I have all the crappy channels in duplicate (I do like project runway and top chef on bravo though). I do not however have any premium channels, no sports packages, or even any porn channels. Half the time when I DVR anything it has visual and audio hiccups through out it. I pay way too much for my crappy cable.

So when I received this points offer I was intrigued. I signed up as it was free, and they gave me a bonus 3,000 points for signing up when I did. Now I could have gotten more points if I also got charter internet and phone, but my husband works in telecommunications and we get internet and phone for free. Though as many times as I have told the damn Charter telephone sales people that, they keep calling me and asking me if I’d like to upgrade my cable to include internet and phone. I tell them on the phone roughly once a week to stop calling unless they are going to lower my ridiculous cable bill. I have been getting nasty with them, but they seem to not understand that they can not beat free internet and phone.

After signing up for the “Live it With Charter” membership I went to see just what I could redeem my points for. First I am told they are all sold out of any redemption stuff, but there is a link where I can redeem my points for charter products. I’m thinking maybe I can get a free On Demand Rental or something like that which would be nice. Now here I got really excited. I’ve never in my life seen such wonderful magical fantastic gifts! I can’t wait to spend 800 points on a White or Ivory Hex Wall Plate. The Ivory would be a great present for my mother in law who smokes. No one will ever notice that she has had her wall plates replaced recently! I could spend 800 points on a 7′ phone cord. Ooooh I need that extra 7 feet so I can extend my phone cord and attach my phone to the ceiling! Won’t that be quirky! Though the gifts really start to get good when you spend a bit more: A 2 way splitter for 2800 points, a white or black RG6 Screw Clip for 3600 points, or a 3 way bal splitter for 3600 points. I am set! I’ll never have to go to radio shack again!

Though out of curiosity I went to radio shack  to do some price comparisons of the rewards to the actual cost of these fabulous components that I was planning to stockpile in my closet. The wall plate with a connector from Radio Shack is $5.49 compared $80 worth of points from Charter. 6″ of phone cord from Radio Shack is $5.99 compared $80 worth of points from Charter. A two way splitter from Radio Shack is $14.29 compared to $280 worth of points from Charter. A 4 way splitter from Radio Shack is $12.99 compared to $360 worth of points from Charter, and I get an extra thingy on the splitter! Coax Clips for RG-8/6/11 Cables (6-Pack) from radio shack costs $2.29 making each clip $0.38 compared to $360 of Charter points for 10, making each Charter screw clip cost $36. That is a %1000 increase for the Charter points product.

Well it looks like my dreams of stockpiling cable accessories in the closet are just not economically feasible.