Year: 2009

Ok, I admit that watching slide shows of your Mother-in-law’s old vacations from 50 years ago isn’t for everyone, however recently my wife and I spent a couple of evenings doing exactly that with my mother-in-law.  This frugal tip might be one of the lamest I’ve heard in a while so I will be offended if it doesn’t make the frugal Friday roundup which features posts such as this one.

How did we get into this predicament?

My mother-in-law used to do a lot of traveling in her younger days and took quite a few slides on her trips.  She still has all her slide shows and also owns a pretty cool slide projector and screen.  I have to admit that I really like setting up the screen because I was never one of the lucky kids in grade school who got to help the teacher set the screen up for a movie.

A couple of the slide shows were focused on my wife as a baby and a little girl which was pretty neat to see.  Some other shows had a lot of my wife’s older relatives in Europe – most of whom I had only met in the last 3 or 4 years).Most of them are quite old – 65-85 years old so seeing pictures of them from 40-50 years ago was very interesting.  My mother-in-law will be 80 this year and she had quite a few shots of herself in her 20s.

How do I get in on this exciting new hobby?

Personally I really enjoy watching old fashioned slides but you can accomplish the same effect by hooking your computer up to your digital tv – I don’t have a digital tv myself but I don’t think it is very hard.  Obviously most people don’t have access to slides and projectors so the tv option might be more realistic.  You can also buy digital projectors but they are pretty expensive at $600+.

I think the slide show idea only works if there are slides worth looking at – my MIL took some pretty interesting trips in her youth and took her pictures sparingly so we didn’t have to look at the same photo from 15 different angles.  The other great thing was that my MIL did have a few comments on some slides and trips but she didn’t go on and on about each photo.  It helps if you wait 50 years before doing a slide show of someone’s trip – that way they won’t remember as many details.  🙂

Getting slides digitized.

This isn’t exactly on topic but I got a couple of slides digitized for this post and thought I would share the experience.  Basically I took the slides to a photo stores (Blacks) and they said it would cost $1.99 per slide or $2.99 to make a print.   This seemed a bit odd since it’s far cheaper to order the $1.99 digitizing and then pay the normal $0.30 rate for printing – but it didn’t matter since I wasn’t getting them printed.

I only had a few slides to digitize so I didn’t bother shopping around – however I’m sure if you have more slides to do then it is worthwhile to find a better price.  Another option is to buy a scanner than can handle slides – that option is fairly expensive but if you have enough slides then you will save money.  You can also buy an attachment for your slr camera.  Both options are discussed here.

Similar trips

One of the more interesting slide shows we saw was a trip through Germany that my MIL took in the early 60s.  Germany is a beautiful country and it’s hard not to take some great photos if you are visiting there.  On that trip she went to a lot of the same places that we went to when visiting Germany last year.  One of the great things about Germany and I’m sure this is true of most of Europe and Asia is that there are a lot of old buildings and cities to look at – the churches in particular are very impressive to look at and are quite old – even though some of them were rebuilt after the war.  The Cologne Cathedral is Germany’s best known church but there are at least a half a dozen other churches in the country (and maybe a lot more) that are almost as good (and with less crowds).

Here are two of the destinations on my mother-in-law’s trip in 1961 that we also went to in 2008 – I’ve included photos from her trip as well as ours.

The Rhine

Yes, the famous Rhine River is in Germany and there is a very scenic drive which we loved because the road was right beside the river so there was great scenery all the time plus a plethora of old castles along the river which has historically been one of the more prosperous areas in Europe.  Some of the castles were just ruins and others are very well preserved and some are even hotels.  Here are two photos of the Rhine – one from 2008 and the other from 1961.  Not the same view unfortunately.

Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber

Rothenburg is a fascinating place and very well preserved.  There are lots of little towns in Germany with old buildings and parts of walls remaining that once surrounded the town.  Rothenburg is all old buildings and has its complete fortress wall – parts of which date back to the Roman empire.  If you ever get a chance to see this town then do it – accomodation is a bit more expensive than most small cities but it’s not too bad.  You could easily spend a couple of days there checking out the wall and various buildings.  Here are a couple of photos from the town square.

In the 1961 photo – the building on the left is the City Hall.  In the 2008 photo it’s the building on the right.

This is one of the gates to the city – the only photos we have of exactly the same scene from both trips.

And last, but certainly not least – one last photo of my Mother-in-law – she used to be a nurse in the Canadian Air Force. For some reason I’ve always assumed that everyone in the airforce flies on airplanes all the time but apparently that is not the case. She did however get to go up in a fighter plane and I thought this photo was pretty cool.

I’m always interested in negotiation tactics. Some people recommend things like mirroring the other person’s body positions to create rapport or trying to hypnotize them by using words that sound like other words and nonsense like that. Maybe these things work for some people, but they seem too silly for me to even try them. These techniques should work for anyone (no need for acting abilities, Jedi mind tricks or anything). Although I’ll discuss these in the context of customer service reps (those difficult people you have to call when you get overcharged on a cell phone bill or your Internet service is down), they should be fairly transferable to other contexts.

1. Make it hard for them to say “No” – If you say “Isn’t there any other promotion you could put me on to save me some money? Please?” it’s too easy for them to say “I’m sorry, but no”. You aren’t on Jeopardy, so don’t phrase it as a question. Anything you ask for, make it a statement “I’m not willing to pay more, I want something comparable to the deal I’ve been on for the last 3 months.” They may still say no, but it’ll be a lot harder for them.
2. Keep repeating yourself – It drives me NUTS when people do this to me, so you might luck out and have someone like me on the other end of the line who’ll get frustrated enough that they’ll give you what you want. Remember, they can’t hang up on you. Every time they “explain” their policy or say no, repeat your request. Don’t be a jerk (hear them out when they respond, if you cut them off and get aggressive, they’ll just get aggressive back). Use different words, but keep making the same request:
   • MC: Hi! I got a phone call the other night saying my phone & Internet promotion is ending, which told me to call you to learn about your current promotions.
   • CSR: Yes sir, unfortunately the discounted rate you received for your first year is ending, so after June 1st you’ll be paying $100 / month instead of the $80 you’ve been paying up until now.
   • MC: I see. So what are my options for promotions?
   • CSR: Unfortunately sir the promotions are only for new customers, your rate will be $100 / month.
   • MC: Ok. The message I got said there were other promotions you’d tell me about though. Ideally I’d like something cheaper than the $80 / month I’ve been paying.
   • CSR: Sir, as I just told you, there aren’t any promotions you qualify for.
   • MC: <friendly laugh> well, the computer voice told me something different so I don’t know who to believe. What’s the promotion if I was a new customer?
   • CSR: Still the $80, but unfortunately you don’t qualify for that.
   • MC: So, if I cancel my service then ask you to reconnect me I can get service for $80 / month?
   • CSR: Well sir, you don’t want a service interruption do you?
   • MC: No really, but I’m sure you don’t want to have to send out a technician twice and disconnect me, then reconnect me. For a $240 savings over the next year I’m willing to go without service for a couple of days.
   • CSR: <muttering under his breath about how much he hates me> Ok, I’ve put you in at the new customer rate. Is there anything else I can help you with today?
   • MC: Yes actually…
3. “Shop” reps – This was a clever idea I came across a while ago, but the plan is if you get someone who won’t give you what you’re looking for (after you’ve tried the first two techniques), thank them, hang up, and hit redial. Get a new rep and repeat the process. Reps are given latitude to deal with customers, so if one is being too stubborn, find some else to deal with. I’d personally be in no mood to get back on the phone after I waited in their queue for 20 minutes, then just spent 15 minutes nagging another rep for what I wanted, but when we’re talking about savings like $240 / year, it’s time WELL spent. One way to also justify this to yourself is every call is costing the company money, so it may be an irritation for you to get what you want, but you ARE costing them money at the same time.
   • One idea I had after reading “The 4 Hour Work Week” was to hire an off-shore personal assistant to argue with companies to get your fees reduced. There’s something delightful about the idea of hiring someone in Mumbai (to save you time) to haggle with the people the company has hired in Mumbai (to save them money).
4. Keep records of your conversations – In his new book Ramit Sethi uses this as a way to blow away reps. Every time he calls a service, he keeps a spreadsheet with a record of the date, the name (and ID) of the employee he talks to, and a summary of the conversation. When he goes over his past interactions with the company, reps often realize that he’s there to play ball and give him what he wants. I suspect that getting a rep’s name and ID number at the beginning of the call would also encourage them to do whatever they can to help you.
5. Try non-traditional avenues for contacting the company – Years ago (at the end of 2001) when I had a problem with my Sprint cell phone, I used a service (I can’t remember the name, it may have been Complaints.com) that would post your complaint on-line, help you structure it, plus send it to the head office of the relevant company. They were MUCH more helpful resolving the issue then their service reps had been (even though I’d escalated it to a “manager”). More recently I had problems with Primus, and kept getting the run-around from the off-shore reps. Finally I got frustrated enough that I called their business support line. The woman I talked to initially told me that line was only for business support, but after I told her how much trouble I was having with the residential support line, she fixed things for me.

Some things might work for other people but don’t work for me, including:

1. Getting angry – Customer service reps are humans (for now, I’m sure robots will replace them soon enough). Perhaps justifiably, when you get angry at them, they get angry right back. I think its fair to be frustrated with a company and to be upset, but often the person we’re talking to had NOTHING to do with the problem (and they’re likely to get annoyed if you start barking at them). I think the above approaches are FAR more effective than raising your voice or starting to curse.
2. Threatening to take your business elsewhere – This is something that MAY be effective to work into the conversation (by telling them about competitors’ superior deals or sayings you’re “thinking about leaving”). If you throw down the gauntlet and say “Do X or I’m going to terminate my service”, there’s nowhere to go if they say “we can’t do X”. They’re called you and you either back down (at which point you might as well get off the phone and call back to talk to someone else – it’s clear you’re bluffing), or follow through on your threat (at which point you’re now in the market for a new service provider, I hope they’re better than the old one).
3. Asking to speak to a manager – Apparently reps just hand the phone to the person next to them who pretends to be a manager. I haven’t gotten better responses from anyone I escalated issues to compared to the front line people (other than on tech support calls, the front line people just follow a script and the people they can escalate to are the ones who actually know what they’re doing).

What things have you found work or don’t work for you when negotiating with company reps on the phone?

One of the new economic and social buzzwords is “frugal” – there are frugal blogs, frugal people, frugal lifestyles.  Everyone is frugal these days ranging from people who have always been frugal their whole lives to people who have no idea what frugal means but just want to be part of the crowd.

One of the things that I wonder about is what is the definition of frugal?  I don’t consider myself to be frugal – I like the term “financially responsible”.  The problem with a term like “frugal” is that it is fairly general and can be interpreted in so many different ways.

Here are a few possibilities that I suspect some people use and my thoughts:

I spend less than I used to (ie I’ve cut back)

I don’t see how this qualifies anyone as frugal – someone who was very spendthrift and has reduced their spending could very well still be a spendthrift.  On the other hand someone who is extremely frugal (like my Mother-in-law) could increase their spending and still be very frugal.

I spend as little as possible

I would think this sounds like a good criteria for frugality – although not the only one.  The problem of course is the application – for some “spend as little as possible” is taken literally and there is nothing in their lives that doesn’t get evaluated for value.  That person might do thing like try to live without a car or with only one car (for a family).  For others – “spend as little as possible” is applied to the lifestyle that they choose without regard to cost.    That family might chose to have 2 cars for convenience – the reduced spending might apply to the options included with the car or even the type of car – but the 2 car variable is not up for grabs.

I expend effort and time to be frugal

This one sounds pretty good – it’s always hard to ignore a good effort.  One of the problems with this approach is that ‘frugal effort’ can be applied to fairly small budget items and savings on larger items might not be maximized which is not very frugal in my opinion.

Here are some examples of ‘frugal effort’ that I’ve come up with just to clarify what I’m talking about:

• Preparing your own meals.  Most people do this, but the test is how often do you eat out?
• Creating basic goods from scratch.   Making your own laundry detergent is only frugal if you have a lot more time than money.
• Comparison shopping/coupons.   This one may be obvious but it takes time.  This has to applied intelligently – saving 25 cents on soup is irrelevant compared to the money you can save on a car.

I save a lot

Frugal or not – a high savings rate is rarely a bad thing.  Like some of the other examples – this one is relative – someone who makes $10 per hour and can save is almost undoubtedly frugal.  Of course if that person is a student living with their parents, then maybe not so frugal.  If that person make $250k per year after tax and saves $50k per year – are they still frugal?  I’m thinking not since they spent $200k in one year!

What is your definition of frugal?

Enough of my thoughts – do you have any “definitions” or criteria for frugality that people should meet before they can wear the frugal badge of honour?