Vacation, here we come

[dipmicro]

I am burning out and after some nasty episodes with eBay customers, we decided enough is enough and took a last minute deal this morning. By last minute, I mean Monday.

Found deal on redtag, but took it to our trusted local travel agency who we were bothering with our requests for some time and made no purchase (so we owed them and they were happy to learn we brought the redtag offer to them). They confirmed they could match it (apparently, travel agents can always match online travel prices). Printed redtag offer and walked to agency, when she tried to book it, it booked 5 nights while original offer was 7. She calls Sunwing and apparently they have been changing the system ... yup, showing $220 more on redtag as well now.

I think Sunwing computer sees a booking and immediately increases the price - this is called dynamic pricing. I call it bait and switch.

I applied for a Gold VISA with travel benefits recently for $110/yr, but it's not in yet, so I ended up shelling another $200 for worry free trip insurance (cancellation, medical and all the jazz).

There goes $420 above the trip, only if I applied for Gold VISA week sooner and clicked that redtag deal right away. Although ... it usually errors with "System error, please try later" so the original good deal was probably Sunwing bait only with 1 seat available anyway.

Needed an inexpensive powerful laptop to keep during vacation and then perhaps become a gameboy for my kids (or a keeper for me if I like it) and since travel agency is in Walmart, I picked a $398 Acer system with Phenom X3 tripple core N830 (sounds too good to be true as there is no tripple cores for such price anywhere else). It turns out, Walmart is out of stock and they are refusing to sell me the open box. Why are you displaying something you cannot sell ?

One good thing happened though. As I complained on Selling forum and eBay staff told me to contact them but never bothered to respond, once I pulled all our auctions and put the store into vacation mode, they emailed me back and removed one libelous negative I was complaining about 😮

Does it really have to take such drastic measures as removing a $2k/m revenue from eBay to catch their attention ? I wish we had an account manager, but we are just a lowly Gold seller X-( Anyway, I have some ideas up my sleeve and if I get more that 4hrs per night sleep (btw. when we go for Caribbean vacation, I usually end up sleeping half the time) and hopefully can change that after we come back 🙂

Cheers.

[reallynicestamps]

If you go to Cuba, for heaven's sake do not attempt to do anything with eBay or Paypal while you are there!

Otherwise.. sun, rum. sun, swim, rum.

I get to go to Edmonton in March for a Stamp Show. wheeeee!

[dipmicro]

Cancun, MX

[dipmicro]

Actually, that you mention it. We been to Cuba twice and tried that internet. it took about 15min to send email :^O

I have some offline work (if permitted by family). DW likes the idea of having a laptop, last time we had one of those little net-books and kids appreciated it to play games in the evening, especially the smaller one who got scarlet fever on the way to Cuba and could not really do anything first 3 days.

[pjcdn2005]

I'm sorry that you had such a bad week but it's great that you can get away for a few days. Hope you have a super relaxing holiday. 🙂

PJ

[pjcdn2005]

If you go to Cuba, for heaven's sake do not attempt to do anything with eBay or Paypal while you are there!

Otherwise.. sun, rum. sun, swim, rum.

I get to go to Edmonton in March for a Stamp Show. wheeeee!

Funny that you mention that..I was just debating if I should tell DH about that show as he loves stuff like that. We'll be in Edmonton the night before to see Jeff Dunham so maybe we'll spend the night in Edm and go to the stamp show.

Will you be an exhibitor there?

[axe_n_gear_music]

Dip,
I just bought a new HP laptop from Staples last week. It is awesome. If I could recommend one thing- you only get what you pay for. Spend more, get more. Its a business write off anyway, and I absolutely love this thing. Got all the bells and whistles, along with the best wireless router they had. (which works perfectly for Call of Duty- a very important thing for teenagers!)
Amazing speed, and 95% connection in the farthest end of our basement (our house is 3200 sq. feet not incl. the basement, and the router is up in my second storey office).

AXE

[dipmicro]

Dip,
I just bought a new HP laptop from Staples last week. It is awesome. If I could recommend one thing- you only get what you pay for. Spend more, get more. Its a business write off anyway, and I absolutely love this thing. Got all the bells and whistles, along with the best wireless router they had. (which works perfectly for Call of Duty- a very important thing for teenagers!)
Amazing speed, and 95% connection in the farthest end of our basement (our house is 3200 sq. feet not incl. the basement, and the router is up in my second storey office).

AXE

Axe, I realize you get what you pay for 🙂 Went through quite a few laptops in my life from good cheap through bad cheap, good pricey and bad pricey, both new and refurbished. I bought my second laptop (Compaq) from OfficeDepot for over $2,200 sometimes in 2004 if I remember correctly. This was shortly after the HP Compaq transition and this laptop was POJ.

Now laptops are so ridiculously cheap and so ridiculously fastly outdated. I don't want bleeding edge unit and plan only about 3 travels this year. Love my desktop, but to be honest, ANY laptop from Staples, FutureShop or Walmart will be 2-3x faster than what I am typing on right now (HP XW4200 Workstation P4, HT 3.2Ghz, bought it about 4 years ago, Windows XP is rotting and slowing down).

After we recoup from the vacation, I'd probably exchange this for a newer DESKTOP. I have nice 21" Samsung LCD and got used to screen real estate. Laptop screen and keyboards make me numb but I can use them for short periods of time. Perhaps I should get one of those 17-18" units, but not sure if they let me take that as carry-on to the plane :^O

[dipmicro]

Actualy, the overexpensive POJ Compaq was probably in 2002, I had a short period where I went through 2-3 laptops per year, got laptops for some of my family members too.

My wife has Lenovo (formerly IBM), it was also bleeding edge $1200 unit from Costco couple years ago, but the carp they put on it makes it really unstable. I cannot install software on it without something else to stop working (exaggerating, but not by much).

I know the cheap brand will break to pieces, but I do not expect it last over it's 1yr warranty. If it does, I fill the warranty card, place it in the box and mail it to closest Acer service center and ask for the $200 off coupon from my next laptop instead of fixing the junk :^O

[zarzuella]

Sit back, relax, hold your face up to the sun and enjoy!
Hope you have a great vacation.

Ann

[reallynicestamps]

Yep.

I'm the one with the pink hair. Drop by and say hello.

[pjcdn2005]

Pink eh...You should be easy to find 🙂

[gifts_of_elegance]

Have a great time in Cancun! I was there Jan13-Feb.11 and enjoyed every day. Each year we go for a longer time. The more I eBay, the more vacations I need.
We always fly with Spirit from Detroit. It cost the two of us $400 return, including taxes. We have flown with them for as little as $111 return w/taxes.
I have a large lap-top that is a bit heavy to carry but it is well worth it. Its every bit as fast as my desktop even though its 4 years older.

Have you tried a Magic Jack? Our son brought one down for us along with a phone and we were able to call all over the world for FREE!

Have a couple of Margueritas for me!

[dipmicro]

Thank you all !

gifts_of_elegance, it's good to know you can fly there cheaper than through pre-packaged vacation. Btw. currently popular drinks in the resort we stayed in are mojitos, pina coladas, and daiquiri. We sneaked onto other resort beach and it seemed to be the same. I had enough drink for all of you B-)

Resort was 2hr drive by bus south from Cancun. It was supposed to be 4.5 star, but I would rate it 3*. Hotel was clean but run-down, and our ground level balcony did not lock and reception personnel took 3 reminders and 1/2 day to bring the repairman who took 2-min to fix it. No promised kids-club, included internet, and even room-safe was extra. Just by occasionally walking through the lobby, we seen two families demanding travel agent to change hotel.

The exchange rate at the hotel was with 20% markup so next time, we bring our own pesos. What is not included, they squeeze tourists pretty bad (like $8 for 1/2hr on internet).

Regardless, we enjoyed it very much and it was long needed.

eBay invoice for last 10 days is $30 (relisting GTC items) and sales are approx. 70% of sales before turning eBay off. I took care of all week worth of customer support under 2hrs and that includes several "Where is my item" and "Your store disapeared, what now" from eBay. And we got another neutral for yet another silly reason, but who cares B-)

I am considering not reopening the eBay store and concentrate on the website (newsletters, coupons, AdWords, etc). It seems we could do about same volume with much less stress, site issues, customer drama and threats.

[dipmicro]

And btw. I ended up getting this for $429 + tax:

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/acer-acer-aspire-15-6-intel-pentium-p6100-laptop-as5742z-4586-brown-as5742z-4586/10155094.aspx

It's sleek 2.5kg entry level dual-core, 4G ram, 600G disk, it's little stronger than my main desktop. The SD socket is a nice plus, because I forgot to take my camera's USB cable and 2G card fills up FAST. The included software is nice, I really like that password protected disk partition and kids love Acer Games (WildTangent Games, I ended up singing up for $7.99/m subscription and me and my 5yr old son are hooked on FATE and Blackhawk Striker 2 :^O

[pierrelebel]

Welcome back.

[gifts_of_elegance]

Happy to hear you enjoyed your vacation and got an amazing new laptop.
Were you in Playa del Carmen? Sorry to hear the hotel could have been better.
After being burned a few times, (Vacation Sell-off & Hotwire) we no longer book through a travel agency. We book direct with the hotel, that way we can walk if we are not happy. They usually upgrade us at no extra charge without us even asking. We were unhappy only once. I requested a non-smoking room and it wasn't. They showed me 8 different rooms, I did not like either one, so they upgraded me to The Royal (which was TWICE as expensive) and did not charge extra.

[dipmicro]

Thanks Pierre.

I am refreshed and recommend all eBay sellers to take time off once in a while. I know "they" will get to me again, but today I was smiling reading emails that would perhaps aggravate me before.

gifts_of_elegance, it wasn't so bad. Agents were offering trip to Playa del Carmen, but we did not go anywhere except walking few kms from the resort. I did not even care about the ocean and tan so much and slept on the room half the time