Cash4Books: Not Such a Great Deal

I recently discovered cash4books.net after reading a magazine article in Woman's Day, I believe. The premise of the website is basically what the url says -- they pay you cash for your books. You can enter ISBN numbers on their website, and they tell you how much, if anything, they'll pay for what you've got. Then you print out a shipping label, send the books away, and when they're processed, you get a PayPal payment. Sounds great, right? Wrong.

I recently sold a few of Guy's old textbooks to the website. My first frustration came after I got a purchase order from Half.com for one of the textbooks that I had listed but given up on. Someone was buying it for $15, and I only got 4.40 from Cash4Books. Granted, that's my fault, not theirs.

However, I got an e-mail today telling me that I had received my payment of...2.40 from Cash4Books. $2.40? That didn't seem right. I logged in to my account and saw that they deducted 100% of what they said they were going to pay me for one of the books because its accompanying CD was opened. Apparently it was a one-time use CD, and Guy had opened it but never used it. I was upset, so I called their toll-free number to complain. When I talked to the woman, she said that it's in their terms and conditions that one-time use CDs cannot be opened. I looked at their terms and conditions, and all that's there is something that says they do not purchase any materials with one-time use accompaniments. So, I asked, "Why did they offer me money for it if it says they don't purchase them at all?" Her response was, "Well, it says that, but sometimes we purchase them. We just prefer not to." Okay, fine, but still, nowhere did it tell me that the CD was not allowed to be opened. They will only ship it back to me at my own expense, too. It got to the point with the phone girl that she told me she'd have her supervisor call me when she got out of a "meeting." Needless to say, I'm still waiting for that phone call, but I will never use Cash4Books again. I know it's only 4.40, but it's really the principle of the matter that bothers me. How do I know they're not going to sell the book anyway, even though they didn't pay me for it? Frustrating! Annoying! Nuisance!

Moral: Do not use cash4books.net...ever!

A Must-Read

I've worked as a server at a restaurant now since April, and one of the most frustrating things is the way people tip. I found this article about tipping etiquette, so please, please, please read it and follow suit.
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/dear-ba-foodist-can-you-set-me-straight-on-tipping-285553/

And I'll add one of my own suggestions -- don't go out to eat at an expensive restaurant if you can't afford to tip properly. If you get a $100 check and figure that you've already spent too much on dinner, it's not fair to gyp the server by giving a $10 tip. Just sayin'.

Vampire Love

I recently finished reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I'm not sure why I didn't read these books sooner, but I really loved them. Although the writing style can be a little bit simplistic, the story was really great and I might...just might...read them again. (I never read books twice). I'm currently forcing Guy to read them so I can have someone to talk to them about because it's lonely when you're in a fictional world by yourself. There's also a movie coming out on November 21, if you haven't seen trailers for it.

If you want to see the trailer, go here.

And if you want to read the books, go to your local library!

Messy Me

I've always been somewhat of a slob, especially when eating. For instance, at our wedding, while eating dinner, I realized I was wiping my hands on my wedding dress instead of the napkin I thought I had put on my lap.

Last night, I spent 15 minutes or so outside, talking to my neighbor while our dogs ran around together. I came back inside and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I looked in the mirror, I noticed that there was a piece of macaroni & cheese literally stuck to my shirt. I ate Pokemon shaped mac & cheese for dinner, so it had been there for a while. How embarrassing.

Another Craigslist Gem

Saw this in the "wanted" section of craigslist:

--Yes, believe it or not, I'm looking for used porn magazines. Will pay cash $0.25 each for fair condition magazines. Pages must not be stuck together and front and back cover must be intact. If you have stacks of old magazines you want to get rid of, let me know... You could get money from them.

Not interested in any illegal porn or magazines from foreign countries (must be English) I may also be interested in used perfect 10 magazines in good condition.--

Now I have truly seen it all.

I'm Just Sayin'...

I saw this post on craigslist and thought it was worth reposting. I"ll let you guess which line is my favorite:

Here is the deal, you give me the name of the person, and assist in the prosecution of this scum bag. I hand you 1000.00 in cash.

On Saturday, Sept. 6th of this year, this jerk broke into my barn and stole 1 trail saddle. It is a TexTan medium brown basket weave, with a rough out seat, it has a 16 inch seat, and is used and broken in.
The saddle is not worth the 1000.00 reward I am offering, I would assume he sold it for around 400.00. Take the Grand and go buy a nice saddle, I would like to get this saddle returned, not because it has great sentimental value or anything like it. It just fits my wife's ass like a glove. More importantly, I want this dickhead exposed for what he really is. Yes I know who took it, I just need to prove it. Please call 724-593-8215 or email me at alldadsmoney@aol.com. I can very easily identify the saddle
The saddle is more than likely still in the Westmoreland county area

Framed

I just got a very interesting phone call from my mom, who just got an interesting phone call from some nutjob woman who is convinced that I hit her while she was riding her motorcycle last night. Here's the story:

Apparently this woman, who I will call Mrs. X, was riding her motorcycle last night when a girl in a Chevy hit her somehow. They exchanged information, but the idiot woman lost it and decided to go browsing through the phone book looking for the perpetrator. For whatever reason, she remembered that the girl's last name was supposedly Rigatti and that she had graduated from Peters in '01 with her son. So Mrs. X looked through her son's yearbook, found me (since I was the only Rigatti in my grade) and then looked up my mom in the phone book to call her and accuse me of hitting her. There are just a few problems with this story:
1. I don't drive a Chevy.
2. I was at home last night at 9:30 when the accident supposedly happened. Thank goodness Guy was here to give me an alibi!
3. The girl had twins in the backseat of her car. As you can probably tell from my perfect figure, I obviously haven't had children, let alone twins. Okay, maybe I don't have a perfect figure, but I still don't have any kids.
4. The girl had Progressive insurance. I have State Farm.
5. The insurance was in the girl's dad's name -- Ray. My dad's name is Joe and he's been dead for 9 years.

My mom said the woman was getting upset with her over the phone, acting like my mom was just trying to protect her daughter and it really was me that hit her. She also claimed that the girl who hit her looked "exactly" like my picture in the yearbook. It obviously wasn't me, and I know it wasn't me, but it really bothers me that someone would have the gall to accuse me of something and call and bother my mom about it just because she's too stupid to keep track of important information like that. I really hope I get to hear the end of the story and find out who actually hit the woman and if I have a bizarro twin out there, but for now, that's all she wrote.