1800Flowers.com update

1800Flowers.com managed to redeem themselves after my mother's birthday gift fiasco. I guess they found my posts on here and contacted me apologizing for the problems and putting their executive customer service people on it. Once a person with the power to do something heard about my problem, she was fantastic about following up with me, even when I was difficult to reach due to my work schedule.
The second bouquet I ordered for my mom showed up a day late but it wasn't their fault, as I recall (she wasn't home when they tried to deliver). So I used the $40 promotion voucher and the $20 credit they gave me for the problems, and ordered my grandparents flowers and cookies for Christmas, both of which showed up right on time. The flowers were really pretty, in particular, and my grandma was "tickled pink" as she'd say.

So, not that I'm advocating complaining on a blog when a company fails to follow through on what you've paid for--but I think it's interesting that it seemed like the blog post got more attention than my phone complaints during the problem itself. At any rate, 1800Flowers.com has earned my repeat business. (And no, they didn't ask me to post this or anything like that; I just feel that I should report on how the entire situation unfolded, so here you go.)

My stupidity almost cost me $50

I flew back from my mom's yesterday, and managed to leave my apartment keys and my work ID in the box I packed up for her to ship to me. My super has an extra key, but the likelihood of finding him on a Saturday night was not good. I was prepared to shell out around $50 of my Christmas money for a locksmith.

Miraculously, I was able to get ahold of the super, who was awesome enough to leave his other job to drive back to Queens to let me in. He went out of his way and it was totally my mistake.

I owe him something, homebaked cookies at least. Peanut pointed out that his willingness to help might have been due in part to our card with $60 in it that we put in his mailbox before we went on vacation, and that's probably the case. I still feel like I owe him something.

and we're back

Well, that was an unexpected intermission. Blogger seems to have eaten all my scheduled posts, so sorry for all that dead air!

At any rate, I'm back home, heading to work tomorrow. I had a lovely time with my family over Christmas, and actually made out like a bandit in terms of cash gifts. Total: $725! I'm topping off the first round of my electrolysis fund with it, which I'm very excited about. I have a coupon for $175 off that expires this week, so tomorrow I'll pop in on my lunch break and purchase the package.

I also got some nice non-monetary gifts and managed to get everyone on my list something special that was both well-thought-out and under budget. Looks like my total gift spending was $330.

I also started making a list of gift ideas for next year, since I always intend to shop throughout the year so that I'm not stressed around Thanksgiving. I usually start the list and then lose it, though. I hope it goes better this year. My biggest plan is a calendar for my grandmother made up of photos of her three grand-daughters (me and my sisters). I don't have a lot of photos of all of us together, and I actually don't have a lot of recent ones of either of them, so it'll be a project to get it all together.

Peanut and I agreed not to exchange gifts so I didn't buy him anything. I hope he sticks to our agreement (I'm pretty sure he will; we don't play games like that) but even if he doesn't I'm not buying him something just to buy it. I actually picked up my last gift at the sales today, but I think I'm officially done.

Hope alla y'all's holidays were as lovely as mine! (Can you tell I was in the South? whoo boy!)

Daily Miscellany, or what's kept me from posting

Inspired by FB, here's the rundown on my radio silence.

• 3 day sales conference, which happened the same week as my final exam
• 2 author events
• Giant work projects that left me about two square feet of floor space in my office
• Christmas shopping
• Court date to face my ex-boyfriend regarding the restraining order I had against him
• Lots of reading for work and book clubs
• Baking/cooking for various Christmas parties
• Sleeping

Here's what's left on my to-do list

• Final project for my LAST CLASS OF GRAD SCHOOL
• Wrap up odds and ends for work before vacation
• Clean the apartment so it's nice when I come back from vacation
• Snuggle Peanut until he can't stand me anymore, since we'll be apart for A WHOLE WEEK
• Write lots of blog posts that have been simmering at the back of my mind

 

My Tax Writeoff--ie, my christmas present to myself

I bought myself a Sony Reader Touch this week. At $293 and change, it was a bit pricey, but it's 100% deductible and what the hell. It makes me more effective at my job and I will actually use it. And I like it way better than the Kindle.

My options:
The Kindle DX -- which I was beta testing for school and did not like. Which is to say, I liked some things about it (screen size) and hated pretty much everything else (feels flimsy, navigation sucks, web browser's a joke, case is heavy, and on and on). Not to mention the issues I have with a closed system and Amazon attempting to lower the perceived value of a book, ultimately threatening my livelihood. They ended up making the discount on this more than I expected, so much so that the Reader Touch ended up costing me more than keeping the Kindle would have. But with all those things wrong with it, I'd already decided against it.

Regular Kindle -- absolutely no interest. I wasn't impressed with their "impressive" version, so I didn't even consider the regular one.

The Nook (or nook, as it's officially written) -- early reviews of this are bad. Like, really bad. Not to mention that it's not shipping until January and in-store placement was delayed by a week, AND it's another proprietary system. I just don't think it's ready for prime time.

Sony Reader Pocket -- about $100 cheaper than the Touch but soooo tiny. The screen size was about the size of a credit card, and the case seemed huge around it. I tried to like it; I went to Best Buy twice just to make sure I really wouldn't be able to stand it.

Cool/Er and other models -- I couldn't find anything to love about them, and I couldn't find any to look at in person.

Old versions of the Sony, like the PRS-500 -- I was hoping to find one from a reputable retailer, but I couldn't, and I wasn't willing to go with an ebay find for this.

The rumors about an Apple reader are killing me, but I decided not to wait for one to come out. My experience this semester was that I read almost 50% more content with an ereader than without, and it was amazingly helpful as I started my new job. Technically, I'm supposed to receive one from my company, but I was approved in July and am still on the waiting list for a device, so I decided to just go ahead and purchase.

The Sony Reader Touch is a good size (slightly wider than a mass market paperback) with a good screen size (about the same as a mass market paperback). It feels sturdier than the Kindle, so I went without a case for now (it came with a neoprene sleeve for some safekeeping--cases cost $30!). I'm familiar with processing documents to load to it and if I have problems I can use my company's support staff to trouble shoot since they're familiar with it. I don't plan to use this for anything but work reading, so I don't care about having a content delivery system a la Kindle or Nook, but anyway, Sony's e-store has many, many options and they're using the industry standard .epub format rather than a proprietary one. And I believe I can use Adobe Digital Editions to access some library books, which is awesome and totally unavailable on other devices. Also, it came in black.

Drawbacks: the screen is a bit more reflective than the Kindle due to the touch screen, which is a little distracting, but I think I'll get used to it. Cases and accessories are ridiculously overpriced. The screen size is about three inches smaller than the Kindle--but again, I think I'll get used to it, especially once I'm no longer referencing a Kindle for class.

How I did it
I got a pretty good deal, all things considered. I discovered a semi-secret corporate discount that gave me $30 off the $299 price tag plus free shipping.

Overall, I'm pleased. I'll turn in my Kindle DX next week. The response from university students has universally been bad, and my professor declined to use the Kindle for her class next semester. Out of 27 students, only 3 were considering purchasing the device at a hugely discounted price, and I bet none of them do it.

I realize that this may seem like a weird purchase to a lot of people, but the value of it for my job is unbelievable. I can literally blow through three or four manuscripts per week with an ereader, which I can't do when I have to carry around all that paper. Yes, that's a book every two days! And when you're trying to catch up with a list as big as I'm facing, that's very helpful.

Finally

This past weekend I finally got around to converting my rollover IRA to a Roth IRA. I expect to take about a $600 hit out of pocket in taxes, but then that ~$4,000 will grow tax free forever afterwards. Yay! I'm just watching to make sure everything converts properly and then I will combine it with my other Roth IRA at a different institution. After the conversion, I'll have to kick in a bit more and then I'll have fully funded a Roth for 2009. Whoo hoo! And I've got everything figured out to set up automatic payments to fully fund it for 2010 and onward.

Finally, I'm getting my retirement accounts in some kind of proper order.

I chatted online with reps from both Vanguard and Fidelity while figuring how to do the process, and both told me they were impressed that I was taking this step at my age, and congratulated me on having a long term outlook. That made me feel good, but it also made me sad because apparently I'm unusual among my peers. To all you twenty-somethings (and really, whatever your age if you're not doing this) GO GET A ROTH IRA RIGHT NOW. Everything you contribute is after tax and so will grow tax free for the rest of your life. That is a HUGE deal. HUGE. Even if you can't max it out (right now, $5,000 per year), contribute whatever you can because compound interest is only your friend when you start early.

Yay me for getting one more thing crossed off my to-do list.

Scrooges

I've been seeing a lot of posts about how Christmas is so commercial and terrible and everyone should boycott it. And you know what, I get it--blah blah blah. Screw you, scrooges. I like buying Christmas presents for my family. We don't really do presents for birthdays in any big way, and we aren't outrageous, spending maybe $25 on each person. Every other year, my siblings and I all wind up under the same roof at the same time, and that's the most frequent it happens now. We don't have much in the way of Christmas traditions because our parents worked in the medical field and frequently were on call or at the hospital on Christmas day. Heck, my sister and I worked 16 hours together one Christmas, running a radio station in our hometown.

But we do have a small gift exchange, and we do really carefully picked out gifts for each person. Two years ago, my brothers got my sister and I the coolest gift--a giant travel mug from our state's college team, and filled it with things from "home" we might be missing--all kitschy and hilarious, and really, really touching. And I like it. And all you people with your anti-Christmas gift rants are bumming me out.

So pffft. I'm buying Christmas presents and if that makes me a cog in the corporate commercial machine, so be it.

LinkFest

A very cool look at author Robert Heinlein's "space age" house, featuring built in furniture, cork floors, and brilliant temperature control. Heinlein's one of my favorite authors, and this house is pretty cool, although now dated.

Peanut and I have been doing a lot of from-scratch cooking lately (including bread bowls!). I want to try these whole wheat tortillas sometime.

I so want to visit this soda shop! The owner clearly has a passion, and some of those sodas sound really tasty. I'm hoping to visit a friend in LA in 2010; this is definitely on the itinerary.

Online coupon use is skyrocketing--use increased 85% from September 2008 to September 2009. I'll be honest, I've always used online coupons. The last thing I do before I check out at any website is google the website and the words "coupon code". I usually find at least $5 off, sometimes it's as much as 40%, and I've been known to cancel the purchase entirely and go to a competitor if I see a better deal there. I'm glad the rest of the world is catching on to this--between the comparison shopping possible with the web and online coupon use, there's just no reason to pay full retail price for anything anymore.

Do you exchange gifts with your significant other? Peanut and I did exchange gifts last year, but we set a $20 limit. We’ve been talking about it this year and we might go in for something we want together rather than buy each other stuff. I loved having something to open from him (and he did such a great job getting me stuff I wanted and needed and stuff we still use all the time) but maybe we could skip exchanging gifts in general.

I like this post, about acceptance, priorities and balance—important to keep in mind about finances but about everything else in general.

Ramit’s guest blogger shares some really inspiring stories of how people tamed their workday to reasonable and manageable times. I’m struggling with setting a good schedule at my job lately—so many people want me in meetings and probably half of these meetings are not necessary (not just that it’s unnecessary that *I* be there, but they’re ENTIRELY unnecessary—“Let’s have a meeting to talk about that email!”).

I’m glad I got into publishing when I did, and I hope I can stay in it for a while, but this news isn’t good.

FB is stopping shopping! She's not buying any new clothes until December 2010. That's a commitment I could not make at this point in my life. Well, let me rephrase. I COULD--I don't really need much new stuff. But it would be very, very hard.

I love this cake!

I've only ever been to one of these "parties" and I totally walked away with some earrings. I would be really upset if this became a regular thing among my friends, though--I'd rather hang out than be sold something!

Interesting how rituals trend from the midwest to the urban east coast. Most of the people on Free Money Finance's list I won't be tipping, because I either don't have them (babysitter, pet-care provider) or have no idea who they are (garbage man, mailman). But I am expected to tip the superintendent of my building. I'm not sure how much we'll give him--he has a new baby at home, but we've had our stuff sitting in the middle of the bedroom for weeks waiting for him to come fix the water damage caused by a radiator leak upstairs. I hate this dance.

Good advice for this season on how to shop online safely.

How much do deal and rebate sites actually save? The answer is, of course, it depends. It's a pretty interesting read, especially the original NYT article.

From Get Rich Slowly, travel sites that save time and money. I hadn't heard of most of these and will be using them next time I book a trip.

I love New York, but I also loved watching New York get blown up, eaten, and washed away in this movie montage of New York destruction.

Oops....

Peanut and I discovered, much to our chagrin, that we overdrafted our joint account last week. This is the first time either of us have ever overdrafted anything, and we're embarrassed and frustrated.

Basically, it was a perfect storm of unfortunate events. We paid all our bills and did all our money transfers on the 28th, which is pretty standard for us. Since it was a Saturday, the transfers didn't start until Monday, and our joint account bank is RIDICULOUS about how long it takes for transfers to process. But I put the rent in the mail on the 1st, as usual, and weirdly, they must have received it the same day because it cleared the bank on the 2nd, one day before Peanut's giant deposit cleared (my deposits appear automatically throughout the month). So the rent overdrafted, and then a credit card payment overdrafted, and then the deposit hit, and we were charged $70 in fees for the two overdrafts. I guess it's better that the rent and credit card payment cleared, because the fees for those bouncing would have been much higher and non-negotiable, but still. We discussed calling the bank and pleading mercy, but really, this was our fault. I should have held onto the rent check until I knew the deposit had cleared, even though they rarely cash the check until the 6th.

We're both a little sick about it, but I think this is a stupid tax that will make us pay better attention in the future.

Another update on 1800Flowers

That bouquet never got delivered.

I ended up cancelling it and placing another order on Friday, which was delivered today. I'm still not pleased (especially since I didn't get the credit I was promised, nor have I seen the $40 gift credit I was supposed to get from the promotion last month) but at least my mom now has a birthday present. I want to use that $20 credit plus the $40 credit plus my own money to get my grandparents a really nice something for Christmas, but we'll see if 1800Flowers can pull it off.

Update on 1800Flowers

Someone actually called me back!

Apparently ALL the florists in my mom's area are "out of flowers". I never did get clarification on whether that's in general or the bouquet I was looking for specifically, but since they didn't know when they'd be able to deliver a bouquet, I asked them to cancel the order and refund the charge. Which they're doing, plus they're throwing in a $20 credit towards a future purchase, although I don't know when I'll feel comfortable ordering flowers from a good-sized metropolitan area since they might, you know, not have any in driving distance.

So, anyway. 1800Flowers will get another shot, but only one more. I've ordered from FTD many, many times and never had a problem like this. This doesn't sound like it was 1800Flowers's fault, but *I* had to escalate the problem and no one contacted me about it, and that's not a good position to be in.

Anyway. Time for dishes.

November spending

Regular day job income: $2,304.23

Misc Income: $19.52 (interest and Pinecone payments)

Total income: $2,323.75

Savings
General savings $910.65 (electrolysis, the future fund, the sunny beach vacation fund, etc--bigger than usual because I knocked down the padding in my checking account and moved it to savings)

Retirement $147.70 pre tax (company matches that)

Spending

Cell phone $77.64
Clothes $46.99 (and actually, that was all jewelry. Perhaps I need a new category...)

Entertainment $41.14 (mostly PaperbackSwap expenses and also 2012)

Dance Expenses $5 (picked up some new laces for my dance shoes)

Food—dining out $188.48
Food—groceries $194.87
Gifts $32.65
Household $93.23 (we bought art!)

Internet $16.98

Laundry $9.00
Medical $79.00 (dental payment and birth control prescription)

Personal $18.19

Rent $687.50

Travel $329.20 (plane ticket for Christmas)
Utilities $67.51

Total spending: $1,870.40

Food spending went up a bit while Peanut's friend was in town, we splurged on art for the apartment, and clearly I need to not go to jewelry parties or hang out at SilverJewelryClub.com (or make a new category for it!). Otherwise, not too bad, since more than $300 of my spending was for Christmas travel. 

Net worth updated--see sidebar. My retirement accounts gained another grand this month, phew!

The day after my birthday is not my birthday, Mum

(Peanut has been watching a lot of Flight of the Conchords lately).

 

1800Flowers has about eight hours to seriously impress me.

 

First of all, their $40 gift certificate promotion was fairly misleading--receiving a coupon "in a couple weeks" is not the same as receiving a coupon "within the first ten days of the following month". I mean, it COULD be, but the details could have been clearer. I still would have signed up for it, but I wouldn't have waited so long to order the bouquet for my mother's birthday, in hopes that I could get her something really really nice with that $40 coupon.

 

Instead, I waited until the last minute I felt comfortable, which was last Wednesday. I ordered a bouquet for delivery on Saturday (her birthday was on Sunday, but deliveries weren't available on the actual day). I went with 1800Flowers because they were the only site that even offered delivery for Saturday--I understand this was a holiday weekend, but if I receive confirmation that flowers will be delivered on a certain day (especially when "Holiday delivery guaranteed!" is plastered all over the site) then I expect delivery on that date.

 

Obviously that didn't happen. Before calling my mom on her birthday, I logged in to 1800Flowers to make sure that they'd been delivered, and all it said was "order placed 11/25" and "order confirmed 11/27". So I called, and the rep told me, "Oh, they called you on Saturday to tell you they couldn't deliver the flower". UM. No, they did not. I didn't even have a missed call on Saturday where they MIGHT have tried to reach me. He apologized, rescheduled the delivery for Monday, November 30, and offered me a partial refund for my trouble. I felt that was perfectly acceptable service and thanked him. I called my mom, apologized that her gift was late and told her she could expect it on Monday.

 

Guess what didn't happen yesterday? Yeah. Again, NO call, NO email, NOTHING.

 

So I called them this morning, and was put on hold for ten minutes while a different rep tried to figure out what was going on. No clue. He was very nice, but kind of unable to help me--he's at a call center somewhere, so it's not like he can go shake his finger in the florist's face, and apparently they're not answering the phone right now.

 

I asked him to escalate the complaint and make sure the flowers get delivered today, or I want a full refund immediately. So they've got about eight hours before I check back in, and if the flowers haven't been delivered, I'm going to be pretty upset. Although I know my mom will understand, I am not happy about sending her flowers a week after her birthday, when they were ordered and confirmed several days before.

Oops

One would think that since I was hardly productive over a four day weekend, I might have got around to finally pulling together the Linkfests that are languishing in draft form, or otherwise come up with something to say on the topic of personal finance.

One would think, but one would be wrong.

I'll be back soon, I promise!

November Recap/December Goals

November Goals
1. Complete IRA conversion and set up automatic payments to max it out for 2009. Um, no. I did not do this.

2. Stick to my budget! I did okay on this...

3. Buy Christmas gifts! Not even started.

4. Handle 2010 health care contributions and flex spending. Done!

5. Spend some money on the apartment. Done! Peanut and I ordered a few pieces that we like and when they arrive we'll get frames and put them on the walls.

December Goals
1. Roll over IRA into Roth IRA, set aside taxes. I don't know if I have until April 15 to do this the way you can max out a Roth that late, but I'm going to trick myself into doing it this month.  Just to get it off my to do list!

2. Research and purchase an ereader. This is a tax writeoff for me, so I need to take care of it in 2009. Right now it depends on price--the price of the DX I'm currently testing for school or a Sony. I'd consider the nook but I want something I can take home with me during Christmas break so that puts it right out--they're now shipping after January 5.

3. Another trip to Goodwill to donate. I've given a LOT of stuff to Goodwill this year and I'd like to do at least one more run to include on my taxes. Maybe next year (my first year without mystery shopping!) I can do taxes the simple way.

4. Look into laser hair removal. I got a $175 off coupon from Completely Bare, and I have $575 in the fund already--might that be enough to do one of the locations I want to get done? I want to look into it before the coupon expires on December 31 anyway.

5. Stick to budget with Christmas shopping. I have just over $400 left in the gift fund and about 14 gifts to buy. My immediate family seems to stick to the $10-20 range so I should be just fine, but I do need to get cracking on it.