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This month I have actually mellowed a bit. Only a couple of minor gripes to offer.
This is more of an alert than anything else
On Wednesday of last week I received a letter from Development Specialists, Inc, a reorganization and bankruptcy company. It seems that way back in February of 1999 I had bought a Hi-Val product that had a $30.00 rebate. For some reason I had not followed my usual abeyance file procedure and never noticed that I had never received a rebate. This letter informed me that Hi-Val had gone belly up and if I wished I could file a claim for my rebate. Of course they also mention that a rebate is considered an unsecured claim and as such goes to the back of the line when it comes time to dole out what ever money is left.
So if you have a rebate due from Hi-Val, good luck!
The sad news is that Sunday I noticed that Comp USA is still selling some Hi-Val products although no rebates were offered. Of course forget about any tech support you might need. UNLESS these new products are by a new company that maybe bought out Hi-Val's inventory.
Staples
Staples advertising flyer for 9 April listed a sale price and $20 rebate for Norton Internet Security 2000. Being in a hurry I only checked to see if the rebate certificate was supposed to be in the box or not. When I got home I jumped through the hoops to apply for the rebate. You know the drill, the bar code, the original receipt, and a page from a Norton product manual. OK, everything was there so I made my usual photocopy and stuck the rebate package in an envelope and mailed it off. That evening I looked again at the copy of my rebate papers and to my dismay noticed that the rebate offer had expired on 31 March.
The next day I went back to Staples and pounded on the counter asking what they were going to do about their erroneous advertisement. I'm glad to report that Staples did the right thing and said if Norton bounced the rebate package they would make the rebate good in the store. It seems they were supposed to have received a package of new rebate forms to put on the shelves but they had never arrived. So if you bought a Norton product in early April with a rebate you might want to check your paper work.
Gasoline Prices
As everybody does I was gripping about the gasoline prices a week ago when somebody suggested I go to a couple of web pages that claim to spot the best gas prices in a given area. The way these web pages work is that they list a lot of the gas stations in a given zip code area and rank them by their gas prices for regular. Unfortunately there haven't been many "spotters" in our area so the information is spotty. BUT if several of you join me in spotting low gasoline prices and reporting them to these two web pages it would be a big help to everybody in our club and in our area.
The URL's are:
http://pricehive.com/jsp/fuel/FuelSearch.jsp
http://www.gaspricewatch.com/
They do NOT have all the area gas stations listed but solicit people to add the missing stations. For example the Redding gas station on Buskirk in Pleasant Hill wasn't listed until I reported it along with the then current price of $1.63 for regular.
Please join me in spotting gas prices and reporting them! Maybe I'll have one less thing to gripe about for the next issue. (Editor's comment -- FAT CHANCE!)
For those of you who did not attend the last DVPC meeting on May 4, here are a couple of items I reported live and in person at the meeting:
94.3% Air or Wasted Resources
MS Streets & Trips 2001 comes in a box measuring 2" x 10.5" x 13" or 273 cubic inches. The contents of this (Continued on page 3)
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