Minor things that bother you

[formulanone]

I call them "Slutbots"

I don't slut-shame my bots. They're just living their best file.

Anagrammed that for you.

[GaryV]

Move
Love
Clove

Why don't they all rhyme?

[JayhawkCO]

Ghoti.

English is weird.

[roadman65]

When you pull up to the ATM at your bank. No line. No one in sight. You get your deposit money. While doing so a large family comes out of nowhere.

It's not just one person out of a family as big as the Brady Bunch only, but Mike, Carol, Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby, Cindy, and Alice all have their own ATM card making separate withdrawals.

[J N Winkler]

These aren't "lonelyhearts" scams. They're pornbots.

There is a difference?

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Passport renewal, which was available strictly by mail only because I have a current valid passport, having to make multiple stops to assemble everything needed to mail in.

[ZLoth]

Passport renewal, which was available strictly by mail only because I have a current valid passport, having to make multiple stops to assemble everything needed to mail in.

What is so hard about it? The last time I renewed my passport in 2022, I had initially planned to do the renewal when I returned from a international trip as it was within one year of expiration. However, because the trip was cancelled, I did the renewal then because, if I'm not going anywhere, I might as well use the non-expedited renewal which, at that time was 12 weeks. I also have a premium membership with AAA, so the passport photos were free, and the passport processing facility is in Irving which is right in the DFW area. And, yes, I paid a little more to get the passport card as well as the passport book.

This year, the Global Entry cards get renewed. Considering that a fee increase goes into effect on October 1st, I'm going to do it in late September.

[LilianaUwU]

Does anybody know anything about the feud between "AAARoads" and "Horse Eye's Back" on Wikipedia? Because "Horse Eye's Back" is tagging a lot of articles as not meeting the General Notability Guidelines, even lists of roads.

Whoever AAAroads is, they're most likely a sockpuppet of someone who has attacked Horse Eye's Back in the past, and they're not affiliated with AARoads or the wiki in any way.

[vdeane]

These aren't "lonelyhearts" scams. They're pornbots.

I assumed they were gathering info on people's profiles so they can duplicate them (what actually happens when people on Facebook claim they've been "hacked").

[kkt]

I call them "Slutbots"

A rose by any other name...

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Passport renewal, which was available strictly by mail only because I have a current valid passport, having to make multiple stops to assemble everything needed to mail in.

What is so hard about it?

I didn't say it was hard. I said it was annoying having to go get a photo taken (which because it was taken by a third party they had to give me the CYA warning that they can't guarantee the government will accept it), go to the bank, go to the post office, look up all the information on where to send the package, rather than going into some office for a one stop shop, take my photo (and know it will be accepted), fill out the forms, pay for the renewal, done.

[SSOWorld]

Does anybody know anything about the feud between "AAARoads" and "Horse Eye's Back" on Wikipedia? Because "Horse Eye's Back" is tagging a lot of articles as not meeting the General Notability Guidelines, even lists of roads.

Whoever AAAroads is, they're most likely a sockpuppet of someone who has attacked Horse Eye's Back in the past, and they're not affiliated with AARoads or the wiki in any way.

To be fair, since we have our own wiki now, we can refer to Wikipedia as The Other Wiki

[vdeane]

A couple money-related ones.  One is the short expiration cycle for rewards points at Price Chopper/Market32/Market Bistro.  The checkouts only give the option to use them when you have more than 500.  You can use them before, but have to specifically request it, so I usually wait until then unless I see that some are expiring.  Well, I somehow missed the thing on my receipts mentioning points expiring (either it's gotten less obvious or I got so used to hitting 500 before this happens that I've stopped checking as vigorously as I should) until I finished checking out today, and now I have a few points expiring by the end of the month with no way to use them in time.

Likewise, my endocrinologist changed how they coded my lab work a few years ago.  Since I work for NYSDOT and have the state health insurance plan, it's split up in odd ways, with medical/surgical care being under United, but hospital under Blue Cross.  When I first started going to them, the lab work was coded as lab work which paid out under United, but a couple years ago they switch coding to something else that gets paid out under Blue Cross for some reason, resulting in my copay doubling.  It also means that I still have to pay a bill for them, even though IIRC lab work with an office visit shouldn't be resulting in charges anymore.  I tried arguing with them over the bill the first time they did this, but they refused to change it.

In a non-money related one, Vivaldi appears to have adopted Chrome's large-text menus rather than using the system menus with no option to change back.  Ugh.  Chrome's are ugly and too big.

[jeffandnicole]

A couple money-related ones.  One is the short expiration cycle for rewards points at Price Chopper/Market32/Market Bistro.  The checkouts only give the option to use them when you have more than 500.  You can use them before, but have to specifically request it, so I usually wait until then unless I see that some are expiring.  Well, I somehow missed the thing on my receipts mentioning points expiring (either it's gotten less obvious or I got so used to hitting 500 before this happens that I've stopped checking as vigorously as I should) until I finished checking out today, and now I have a few points expiring by the end of the month with no way to use them in time.

A number of reward programs do this, and it sucks.  McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts are 2 I've lost points on since they now expire. Actually with McD's, using the points usually results in a smaller savings than just using one of the basic rewards, so I rarely actually use them. Much of the time using the reward programs gets me discounts so I benefit from that, but I forget about or purposely don't use the accumulated points. 

[kkt]

A couple money-related ones.  One is the short expiration cycle for rewards points at Price Chopper/Market32/Market Bistro.  The checkouts only give the option to use them when you have more than 500.  You can use them before, but have to specifically request it, so I usually wait until then unless I see that some are expiring.  Well, I somehow missed the thing on my receipts mentioning points expiring (either it's gotten less obvious or I got so used to hitting 500 before this happens that I've stopped checking as vigorously as I should) until I finished checking out today, and now I have a few points expiring by the end of the month with no way to use them in time.

Well, yeah, the purpose of loyalty points is not to give you stuff for free, it's to keep you coming back.  Putting limitations in the way of redeeming the points keeps the program from costing them too much.

[GaryV]

my endocrinologist changed how they coded my lab work a few years ago

It probably wasn't your doctor's decision. The gummint (CDC) introduced ICD-10 coding  in 2015. I suspect it was a matter of them at some point having to comply with the new codes, perhaps after some clarification instructions from the insurance companies.

[vdeane]

A couple money-related ones.  One is the short expiration cycle for rewards points at Price Chopper/Market32/Market Bistro.  The checkouts only give the option to use them when you have more than 500.  You can use them before, but have to specifically request it, so I usually wait until then unless I see that some are expiring.  Well, I somehow missed the thing on my receipts mentioning points expiring (either it's gotten less obvious or I got so used to hitting 500 before this happens that I've stopped checking as vigorously as I should) until I finished checking out today, and now I have a few points expiring by the end of the month with no way to use them in time.

Well, yeah, the purpose of loyalty points is not to give you stuff for free, it's to keep you coming back.  Putting limitations in the way of redeeming the points keeps the program from costing them too much.

Sure, but normally I'm good about avoiding such things (and the BS fees that lots of companies structure in to make more money).  I take a lot of pride in avoiding such things, so it hurts so much to be hit by it this time (even if the actual financial impact is only 31 cents).

Also, your post reminded me of the episode of Ghosts where Trevor's brother exploited a loophole in the Woodstone Rewards program to live there for free.

[wanderer2575]

A couple money-related ones.  One is the short expiration cycle for rewards points at Price Chopper/Market32/Market Bistro.  The checkouts only give the option to use them when you have more than 500.  You can use them before, but have to specifically request it, so I usually wait until then unless I see that some are expiring.  Well, I somehow missed the thing on my receipts mentioning points expiring (either it's gotten less obvious or I got so used to hitting 500 before this happens that I've stopped checking as vigorously as I should) until I finished checking out today, and now I have a few points expiring by the end of the month with no way to use them in time.

More irritating to me are store gift cards, i.e. actual cash, that expire (how the fudge does cash expire?) or deduct a monthly "maintenance fee" after some number of months after purchase, like they have to take my card balance out for a walk or something.

[mgk920]

A couple money-related ones.  One is the short expiration cycle for rewards points at Price Chopper/Market32/Market Bistro.  The checkouts only give the option to use them when you have more than 500.  You can use them before, but have to specifically request it, so I usually wait until then unless I see that some are expiring.  Well, I somehow missed the thing on my receipts mentioning points expiring (either it's gotten less obvious or I got so used to hitting 500 before this happens that I've stopped checking as vigorously as I should) until I finished checking out today, and now I have a few points expiring by the end of the month with no way to use them in time.

More irritating to me are store gift cards, i.e. actual cash, that expire (how the fudge does cash expire?) or deduct a monthly "maintenance fee" after some number of months after purchase, like they have to take my card balance out for a walk or something.

IIRC, Wisconsin state law does not allow gift cards to lose 'face' value.  Like with postage stamps, they want you to buy them, but never use them.

Mike

[J N Winkler]

If I had my druthers, merchants would not be allowed to sell anything with a deferred-redemption component unless the full value of said component were kept available to the customer without expiration.  This would mean:

*  Store gift cards and gift certificates would never expire.

*  Stored-value debit cards would never expire.  (I believe federal regulations already require this.)

*  Loyalty points would remain permanently available to the customer until used up.

*  At any point, the customer could demand the full face value in cash.

If this forced supermarket chains to phase out loyalty programs, I would not shed a tear.

[SEWIGuy]

If I had my druthers, merchants would not be allowed to sell anything with a deferred-redemption component unless the full value of said component were kept available to the customer without expiration.  This would mean:

*  Store gift cards and gift certificates would never expire.

*  Stored-value debit cards would never expire.  (I believe federal regulations already require this.)

*  Loyalty points would remain permanently available to the customer until used up.

*  At any point, the customer could demand the full face value in cash.

If this forced supermarket chains to phase out loyalty programs, I would not shed a tear.

What do you have against supermarket loyalty programs?

Anyway, I am with you until the last point. Why should the store have to redeem the card for cash?

[vdeane]

More irritating to me are store gift cards, i.e. actual cash, that expire (how the fudge does cash expire?) or deduct a monthly "maintenance fee" after some number of months after purchase, like they have to take my card balance out for a walk or something.

I remember reading about those in the book Gotcha Capitalism (which has a lot of very, very good advice on avoiding BS fees and the like).  Gift cards even have a whole chapter in and of themselves.

That book also has a chapter on grocery stores, although it notes that rewards program BS isn't entirely unavoidable unless you want to pay more for groceries, as the stores also use it to track what customers buy.

If I had my druthers, merchants would not be allowed to sell anything with a deferred-redemption component unless the full value of said component were kept available to the customer without expiration.  This would mean:

*  Store gift cards and gift certificates would never expire.

*  Stored-value debit cards would never expire.  (I believe federal regulations already require this.)

*  Loyalty points would remain permanently available to the customer until used up.

*  At any point, the customer could demand the full face value in cash.

If this forced supermarket chains to phase out loyalty programs, I would not shed a tear.

What do you have against supermarket loyalty programs?

Anyway, I am with you until the last point. Why should the store have to redeem the card for cash?

What if the person has a gift card for a place they aren't interested in shopping at?  Or wants to change grocery stores without leaving a rewards balance (essentially impossible where I shop, as you can't redeem and earn points in the same transaction).

[1995hoo]

Y'all might find the following Ninth Circuit opinion interesting. Essentially, when a woman in Oregon was released from jail, they returned her money via a debit card that charged her fees.

https://casetext.com/case/brown-v-stored-value-cards-inc-2

(The case was still going as of last fall—a Google search revealed another opinion from the district court.)

[SEWIGuy]

What if the person has a gift card for a place they aren't interested in shopping at?  Or wants to change grocery stores without leaving a rewards balance (essentially impossible where I shop, as you can't redeem and earn points in the same transaction).

So because someone bought a bad gift, a card to "a place they aren't interested in shopping at", the store is now responsible for making it right?  People get bad gifts for one another all of the time.

By the way, I have had friends use this service. You get about 80 cents on the dollar, but if you truly do not like the store, you can get some cash for it.

https://www.cardcash.com/

[J N Winkler]

What do you have against supermarket loyalty programs?

They undermine price transparency.  I prefer to shop by value as measured against net price, and loyalty programs--especially ones based on points that do not have an explicit and easily found dollars-and-cents value--introduce an added layer of calculation.

For similar reasons, I support legislation that prohibits perpetual sales and requires display of unit cost for every price level accessible to the customer.  (With digital coupons, it is not uncommon to see three price levels:  without loyalty card, with card but without digital coupon, and with card and digital coupon.)

Anyway, I am with you until the last point. Why should the store have to redeem the card for cash?

Vdeane mentions one of the reasons--the value of the card should not be tied to the issuing establishment in any way.  Another is that a redemption requirement serves as a check on loyalty programs in general.  If it makes such a program uneconomic for a store to pursue, that is a benefit to the consumer.

I have read that one of the rationales for giving a gift certificate instead of an equal amount in cash is to ensure that the money is spent on items the store actually sells.  While I understand the appeal of this in the case of, e.g., a black-sheep relative who might otherwise spend cash on street drugs, the reality in economic terms is that buying a gift certificate amounts to setting some of the money on fire since the loss of convertibility equates to a reduction in the face value.

So because someone bought a bad gift, a card to "a place they aren't interested in shopping at", the store is now responsible for making it right?  People get bad gifts for one another all of the time.

Yes, absolutely.  Having to refund unwanted merchandise is a normal commercial risk.