Here Comes The Sun

Greetings from Tornado Alley. Yeah, really. We had a tornado here in the Bay Area this past week and it was so weird - one week it's sunny and 85 degrees and the next week we've got rain and wind and tornados and all kinds of crazy stuff happening. Reminded me of that Dennis Quaid movie where everything is normal and we're all just driving around in our SUV's and then all of a sudden the atmosphere starts freezing and the oceans turn to ice and there's tornados in L.A. and planes are crashing and people are dying and there's this big sucking thing happening over Minnesota and we all have to evacuate to Mexico before or we all die and...

Hey, it could happen.

Anyways, I didn't come here to talk about the weather. I came to talk about gift cards, and in particular about a $65.00 gift card I currently have in my wallet for a major electronics store. I got the card last Christmas and I thought it was very nice and thoughtful present and was genuinely grateful to receive it, but the problem is it's almost the end of March now and I still haven't used it. Which brings me to the point I'm trying to make.

Like I said the card is from a well known electronics retailer who I don't want to name or libel in anyways, so let's just call it Pest Pie. There are many Pest Pie stores around the country and they sell a variety of electronic goods ranging from TV's to computers to digital cameras to stereos to cell phones to...well, suffice it to say that if it has anything to do with audio or video or computing they sell it. They are, in fact, an electronics supermarket, and anyone who knows me and my attraction to all things electronic would naturally assume that a Pest Pie gift card would be the perfect Christmas gift, and they would be right. Yet, for some reason, the card still sits in my wallet unused.

What is going on here?

Well, two things really. The first is that it's hard to buy anything at Pest Pie for $65.00. Oh sure, you look at the ads and it looks like there's plenty of stuff to by at that price, but if you look a little closer you see that there is more going on here than meets the eye. For example, in the ad you see the latest electronic wonder gadget selling for a ridiculously low price of just $49.95 and you say "Wow, I can get one of those", but then you look a little closer and you notice that the advertised price is not really the price you are going to be charged. You might have to squint but it's right there in tiny black print at the bottom of the ad.

"In store price $999.95 less $500.00 mfr. mail-in rebate less $300.00 Pest Pie mail-in rebate less $150.00 special promotion mail-in rebate = $49.95 final cost."

Oh, I get it. That $49.95 price is not the real price, that's just the teaser price. In actual dollar terms you $65.00 gift card is still going to leave you about $835.00 short. Well, that's ok, it's just a matter of sending in a form and waiting for the check to come back, right? So then you go to the store and read the rebate offer and they've got all this paperwork for you to fill out and copy and mail in and then they say you've got to allow them 12-15 weeks to process your rebate and send out your check and of course by that time they're hoping you'll have forgotten about it or lost all your paperwork so you won't have any evidence to back you up when you call them up and ask where your rebate check is, and then it dawns on you. What a scam, and apparently a pretty successful one too judging by all the rebate deals they offer. Sheesh, you can't even buy a 50 cent pack of gum at Pest Pie without doing some kind of rebate - "In store price $9.99 less $9.00 mfr. mail-in rebate less $0.49 Pest Pie mail-in rebate = $0.50 final cost."

So that's the first problem I'm having with the gift card. The second and more fundamental problem I'm having is that there is just nothing at Pest Pie that I want to buy. I've been down there a couple of times already and gone all throughout the store and I just can't find anything. I know I've blogged on this before, but it's still true - I've got all the electronics I need and I don't want any more. That $65.00 gift card might as well be for Mary Kay cosmetics for all the good it's doing me. It's just so sad.

So instead of just letting it expire I was thinking maybe I'd get one of those new Sony PSP's that go on sale tomorrow. You know the really cool looking ones. They cost a lot more than $65.00 but the card will give me a nice discount. Unfortunately that's no good either because they'll be sold out of those pretty quick, and besides I don't know what I'd do with a game machine even if I had one. I don't play many videogames anymore and certainly not the console kind, so the fact that I'd even consider buying one just shows how effective the whole Sony hype machine has been. Just think, even people who don't play Playstation games want one. That's good marketing, and I can just see myself camping out in front of the local Pest Pie tonight just so that I can buy the latest cool thing and let it fill the big whole in my life for the next month or two until the next cool thing comes along and leaves me yearning and empty all over again.

You see, that's the way it is when you're an electronics junkie.

Only now I'm thinking maybe I've changed. A $65.00 gift card and no desire to use it. It's kind of spiritual, really, and liberating. Maybe this is a new path, a new beginning, a new...

Oh God, I hope this doesn't mean I'm going to start eating organic foods and listening to Yanni records.