Coupon Codes & The Conundrum Of Internet Couponing

Do coupon codes generate sales or just cut into profits?

Whenever you buy something online, it seems, you are prompted to apply a "coupon code" to get a discount.  If you have bought from a merchant before and got on their mailing list, sometimes they will send you these codes.  "Buy again right now! Use coupon code SPRING15 to save 15%!"  And indeed, you may have consented to their mailing list previously in order to get some other coupon code discount.

There are also sites on the internet that claim to have coupon codes for you to use.  Most of these are bogus.  "Coupon code for garbageyoudontneed.com for 75% off!" one crows.  But of course, no merchant is offering 75% off - or if they are, they are a crummy merchant.

Most of these "Coupon code" sites tease you with the codes, and you have to click on them to reveal the code.  Clicking on the code opens a new tab for the merchant in question, and the coupon code site gets a small referral fee.  Not a few months ago, it seems, some of these coupon codes were valid, but today, most are bogus.  "Free shipping!" one coupon "code" reveals - but that is the default offer for everyone on that merchant site.

I also noticed a funny thing on some sites - while the coupon code of "SPRING15" saved 15% on my purchase, the code SPRING20 (which was not advertised) saved 20%.

But lately, I am finding that merchants are not using such obvious codes and moreover, most of the codes touted on coupon code aggregators are invalid, even if they claim "recent use" and "90% success rate" for a code. In short, most of these coupon code sites are trash.

And this is not unexpected.  If you can scrape a few pennies from a website referral (as these coupon code sites are doing) then you need not supply real codes but just have an AI bot gin up some fake ones.  If the customer buys through the tab the site opened, they get a referral fee.  Profit.

For the actual merchant, well, there is no point in letting people use coupon codes willy-nilly.  The problem with electronic couponing has always been the windfall effect.  You want to use coupons to alter consumer behavior - induce them to spend, induce brand loyalty, induce repeat purchases.  If a customer was going to buy anyway at full price and then gets 15% off by googling "coupon codes for garbageyoudontneed.com" then the merchant is missing out on maximized profits.

I wonder, sometimes, if a clever IT person has programmed the checkout to deny all coupon codes if the buyer tries to enter more than, say, two or three.  If a buyer tries a number of coupon codes, they are not seeking a discount they are entitled to, but merely fishing.

Getting a coupon discount is nice and all, but I prefer to shop based on everyday low prices.  When I see a merchant offering lower prices to other people but not to me, it makes me think two things.  First, their prices are way too high if they can offer 15% off without blinking.  Second, maybe I don't need to buy from that merchant, but should shop around.

Or just decide not to consume at all.

Because in the time I spent dicking around with coupon code sites, I realized that whatever it is I was going to buy, I really didn't need or want.  So maybe coupon codes serve a purpose after all!

Why "Star Wars" Isn't Science Fiction

Science Fiction has been degraded in recent years to mere spectacle, without purpose.

I wrote before about E.M. Forester's The Machine Stops, a real science-fiction story about a dystopian future where people huddle in their homes, connected to each other only by video screens and electronic communications, having their every need catered to by machines, while at the same times having no idea of how the machines work.  It could have been written last week, describing America today or in the near future, where we all "cocoon" in  our homes and have our meals pre-made and delivered, while we all watch YouTube videos and instant message each other.

It was written over 100 years ago.

What is interesting about the story is not the technical details, but the human ones.  The main character's Mother spends her days bloviating online to her thousands of online Facebook friends about "Music of the Australian Period."  Forester is hinting that her lecture is full of bullshit nonsense - anticipating the podcasts of the future - where everyone is an expert and facts are flexible.

He gets the human part right. But even the technical details are amazingly prescient - predicting indirect LED-style lighting, pad-type devices (round, not rectangular - there's a hint, Apple!) as well as a voice-activated control system like Siri.  Missing are any light sabers, exploding death stars, or evil empires.

Instead, Forester points out the evil empire is us - humanity - and our desire to wallow in our own crapulence.  And sadly, it seems Forester was right.  Corporations seem to look at these descriptions of a dystopian future as a roadmap for profitability.  Republicans subscribe to a "Club for Growth" as if packing as many humans onto the planet as physically possible is part of God's plan and the route to success, not misery.  Yet others have given up on planet Earth entirely and want to colonize desolate waterless planets bathed in radiation.  It makes no friggin' sense.

The problem with Star Wars is that it is all spectacle and no plot.  Oh sure, there is a plot, as much as any soap opera has a plot.  People connive against one another and two sides fight it out, with neither one ever winning.  It is Space Opera, not science fiction, based in part on Japanese Samurai films and in another part on the mindless Saturday morning matinee 13-chapter serials that kept children entertained before the era of television (e.g., Tom Mix, Flash Gordon).  Why do you think the first Star Wars was called Chapter IV?

A year or so ago, I signed up for Disney+ for a month, figuring I would see what the fuss was about in The Mandalorian.  I told Mark, "You probably won't like this, it is Star Wars crap!" as he wasn't really a SciFi fan.  Oddly enough, he liked it, I think in part because of Pedro Pascal's gravelly sexy voice, and in part because of all the action sequences.  Before anything gets too boring, a fight always breaks out. That's action-adventure, not SciFi.

Sadly, so much of SciFi today is this way - plotless spectacles that rely on CGI to keep us entertained. And while we all enjoyed watching the Titanic sink in 3-D, people have since become jaded by CGI spectacles.  Heck, you can create your own with an online AI-chatbot in a matter of minutes.  Just don't count the number of fingers on each hand.

So much has been lumped in with "SciFi" these days, including fantasy films (swords and elves and that sort of shit) as well as comic book heroes.  Each is the same as the other - CGI distractions, little in the way of plot, and nothing that really makes you think about greater issues confronting humanity.

The best SciFi stories are often allegories about humanity and life on Earth.  The best of the original Star Trek episodes weren't about shooting it up with Romulans or Klingons, but were thought-pieces about issues confronting humanity in 1968 - or indeed, any era.  And not surprisingly, those episodes were written by actual science fiction writers, such as Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, D.C Fontana, as well as a host of others.

The Machine Stops isn't about battles between empires or sword fights between protagonists - indeed there are no fights involved.  It is a prescient warning about where humanity is headed with technology and is designed to make you think about what technology has wrought.  That it still is relevant a century later is evidence as to its real power.

Apple has licensed The Mandalorian to promote its new phone - telling people they can take snappy pictures and join-up with their fellow cosplayers via the machine.  In a way it is apt, as they are using a SciFi franchise that mindlessly glorified technology to promote mindless technology.  After all, you wouldn't want to have a phone that connects you with people who don't think as you do, right?  And we certainly don't want people thinking Apple is part of the problem and not the solution - right?

That is the weird thing about Star Wars - they posit a future (or a past, in a galaxy far, far away) where there is limitless energy, limitless natural resources, and yet what do people do?  Kill each other over control of resources.  Quite frankly, it makes no sense.  If you have that level of technology, you don't need to "restore order to the galaxy" or whatever (the weakest plot motivation ever devised) because the galaxy has, if not limitless, at least untold resources.  And there are always other galaxies, right?

(And please, don't get me started on Space Whales!).

But maybe that is the real corporate message here - no matter how much we have as a civilization, it is never enough, and we need to go to war and kill each other to maintain power and control of these resources.  It is a pretty sick message, if you think about it.

But hey, maybe Star Wars is a message movie after all!  Because if you think about what they are really saying, it is that humanity really sucks and that we are doomed to fight with one another, perpetually, to gather whatever scraps we can scrounge from the table, or to hoard resources and accumulate power.

Pretty sad message!

KOA Points - An Example Why Points Are Worthless

To get a "free" stay ($50) at a KOA you need 25,000 "points."  Each stay only "earns" you 1,000 points.

We are making plans for our summer trip.  We are spending one night at a KOA en route, to break up a long day of travel.  We don't stay at KOA's much as they are expensive, and like most commercial campgrounds, often place you chock-a-block next to another camper.

But they are handy in some situations.  You want a spot off the highway with a laundry and a nice site with a brick patio and barbecue grill - they have that.  But it can cost $70 a night, which, with my "geezer" pass is enough to spend three days or even a week at a Army Corps park - with a site on the water, away from fellow campers.

When we made our current reservation, they offered to "renew" our membership for $35.  I don't recall paying for membership in the past, and our "points" would roll over from year to year.  Now they expire unless you pay.  Since we don't stay at a KOA more than once or twice a year, it make no sense to renew.   Even the 10% discount would require we stay five nights or more, just to break even.  We're just not KOA frequent flyers.

I am not taking a piss on KOA here.  Their "rewards" program is designed to reward frequent flyers, not occasional users.  If you stay at a KOA for 30 nights a year, you will earn a free night stay (or the monetary equivalent thereof) as well as save over $200 on camping fees (minus, of course, the $35 membership fee). So, for Mom and Dad in their 45-foot bus motorhome, who spend all day inside watching Fox News and waiting for the grandchildren to arrive, well, it makes some sort of sense.

For people like us, well, not so much.

I recounted before how Mark signed up for "Hilton Honors" as we stayed at the Atlanta Hilton twice a year when he worked for the Lighthouse.  It made sense as we were "frequent flyers."  But once he retired, well, those points got used up or expired over time.  Ditto for airline miles - I got a missive from American, I believe, offering to preserve my miles from expiring - for a small fee.  I laughed.

Yet, a lot of people chase rewards points and cash-backs and don't bother to think about whether they are actually saving money or just attaching themselves unnecessarily to one brand.

When I was flying from DC to Silicon Valley once a month, it made sense for me to accumulate frequent flyer miles, and use them to try to wrangle an upgrade to business class.  In this era of over-booked flights, the concept of a "free flight" is largely illusory.  Besides, back then, I would book my flights a month in advance (round trip from SFO to IAD, "staying over" three weekends) and get fares as low as $199 a flight. Why waste miles on that, when they are better spent upgrading to business class?

But again, once I stopped traveling, it made no sense to hang on to the miles, and in fact, I had few left as I tended to use them as soon as they accumulated.

Like a gift card or gift certificate, I tend to use these things right away and get rid of them like a hot potato.  The gift card industry knows that a large percentage of cards are never used as idiots put them in a drawer somewhere to "save for special" and then forget about them.  Money is money, and no one stuffs a $100 bill in a drawer and forgets about it.  Well, at least I don't.  I had to break Mark of that habit, early on (as well as the habit of stuffing gift cards in a drawer).

If you are paying money to keep your "points" alive, consider carefully whether it is worth it.  In our case, $35 would have kept 3,000 "points" alive, which were "worth" only $15.   No savings there and we had no intention of staying 30 days more at a KOA this year.

I think companies are getting wise to this, which is why they charge fees to be members of a rewards points scheme. There are overhead costs associated with dormant accounts - which is why banks charge fees on dormant accounts - to drain them dry and close them.  But for "rewards" schemes, there is little point in letting someone accumulate points for several years, give them a 10% discount, and then a free night's stay, if they are only staying a few nights a year.

It is akin to the problem with online coupons and the like - offering windfall savings to buyers who would have bought anyway.  Bank of America offers me "deals" on things, and I have to click on and "accept" a deal to get the cash-back. Maybe subconsciously I end up buying from that merchant?  Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think mostly I just get the occasional windfall cash-back on gasoline or something.  I am not interested in a discount on UnderArmor, meal kits, or food delivery, as I never buy these things.

But getting back to KOA rewards points, I would rather shop on price than on rewards.  Because even the nicest KOA I have been to (and indeed, some are very nice!) pales in comparison to the great outdoors you can experience in a State or Federal Park, National Forest, or Army Corps Park.  Not only that, but they are a helluva lot cheaper as well!

Out of Data!

For the first time, all three of our cellular devices ran out of data before the end of the billing cycle.  What's up with that?

It seems that everything today is a video.  Fahrenheit 451 has arrived.  In that Ray Bradbury novel and subsequent movie, the story is told of a dystopian future where books (and all forms of print) are banned by the government, in order to control people and prevent them from being exposed to different ideas. Since houses are now fireproof, firemen actually set fires, by burning books.  Paper combusts at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, hence the title.

People read wordless comic books instead of newspapers, and video has supplanted the printed word, in this horrific world-of-the-future. It all seems so familiar right now. Today, when I search on something on Google, the first five hits are for YouTube videos. How do I fix my bicycle?  Watch this 30-minute YouTube video whose content could be reduced to two paragraphs of print, at best.

Of course, the point is to have you watch one commercial after another, which is why so many YouTubers and Vloggers stretch out their "casts" to get you to watch longer and longer.  It is getting to the point where I always check the video length before watching. 30 minutes? Unless it is a movie, I ain't clicking.

So much of social media is now video, too - unnecessary video as well.  I despise these videos that are nothing more than some guy or gal staring into their laptop or phone (often the latter, in their car) and just talking. I mean, I know people personally, who talk, and if I want to hear someone talking, I can just listen to them.  Often they have something more interesting to say.

The printed word rules. It is compact, requiring little in terms of physical space or digital space, and can be "fast-forwarded" or "rewound" at will and "played back" at any speed.  I can download and read repair instructions in a matter of seconds.  A video takes a minute to load sometimes, and you have to watch five minutes or more before you realize the guy is talking about a different machine or has no clue what he is talking about.  Just give me the service manual, please!

But more important than the general decline of civilization, civility, and intellect (because that's just inevitable, right?) is the staggering increase in bandwidth needed to send all this video data, particularly at higher definitions.  Simple ASCII characters required only 8 bits, assuming you have 128 characters and one parity bit.  That's one byte per character.

There are a little less than a million words in the entire works of Shakespeare.  If we assume an "average" word length of 8 characters per word, you'd need "only" 8MB to store the entire portfolio.  But if you want to just watch "Hamlet" the video uses up 1.6 GB.   Granted, the play's the thing, to be seen, not just read.  But the example illustrates how much more space video takes up than text. And let's face it, most of the dreck on YouTube ain't Shakespeare (certainly not my channel, anyway!).

So bandwidth literally costs money - to produce and to consume.  And this blog is (nominally) about saving money. I have recounted before how you can reduce resolution on most channels to save bandwidth and avoid data caps. But with the plethora of streaming channels online, it gets cumbersome to do this, particularly as each channel has a different name for bandwidth adjustment and locates it under a different icon.  Disney calls it "data saver" and puts it under your "profile" - but resets it to data-waster on a regular basis.

I think YouTube used to have a resolution adjustment, but I can't find it now.  Oddly enough, it seems that porn sites are the only sites that let you scale down to as low as 240p.  No one likes interruptions!  Yet some channels - most, it seems, stream by default in high-res and don't offer a lesser resolution (or make it hard to select and don't save that preference)

AT&T Prepaid has a "video management" setting that throttles video on my poverty hotspot, but I am not sure if it works OK or merely causes some streaming channels to pause:

With video management on, we manage your video experience, striving to deliver video in standard definition (at a max of 2 Mbps if you have both a 5G-enabled device and rate plan, or 1.5 Mbps otherwise). This should be perfect for viewing on a smartphone, but you can turn it off any time to enjoy higher definition video, when available

Sadly, it seems that this "stream saver" feature is limited to hotspot devices these days. Speaking of which, we may lose our hotspot subsidy unless Congress re-authorizes it.  We may lose it anyway, as, thanks to inflation, our income may now exceed the caps.  AT&T has temporarily authorized a $15-per-month credit, for the next three months.  Hey, that's something!

You could, of course, merely pay more for more data or "unlimited" data (which, as we discussed before, is not really unlimited).  But throwing money at a problem is not solving it.  And I suspect the Internet providers are happy that more and more people are watching video rather than reading, and watching 4K on their smartphones, which, as AT&T admits, is just plain stupid.

Of course, the ultimate solution is to consume less.  I find myself downloading fewer and fewer "funny videos" because they usually are a disappointment and take too long to load on my phone.  Even photos, particularly photos of text are stupid and a waste of bandwidth.  Just type it out, for chrissakes!

Why, dear God, do cell phone photos take up so much data?  They don't seem to be much better than the old digital camera days - and in fact, in some respects, worse.

But maybe that right there is the solution.  So long as we keep watching pointless high-res videos of people talking into cameras, the streaming sites will offer more of this garbage (as well as overblown soap operas and "reality" shows.  If people want to pay extra for this crap, that is their business.  But on the other hand, it utterly voids their right to complain about "living paycheck to paycheck."  One cannot squander money and then complain about being broke.

But moreover, if people stop watching high-res videos because they are too expensive to watch, then maybe advertisers will get the hint and pressure streaming services to offer lower-res options.

I mean, I get it - you have an eight-foot television and are watching Lord of the Rings, Dune Edition - you want the high-res imagery.  But for a YouTube "how-to" video peppered with ads, well, the source video probably wasn't in 4K, so what's the point?  Just dial it down, be happy, and save money.

So there's a hint to all you marketers out there - you may be losing eyeballs by putting up your ads for laundry detergent in high-res.  Americans don't like paying for television as it is - paying for ads is even worse.  And if you are paying-by-the-byte, then a 30-second ad for Old Spice may literally be taking a penny out of your pocket.*

Ain't worth it!

* I estimate that each hour of streaming video uses about 1GB of data in medium resolution.  Some higher resolutions can go up to 7GB an hour(!!).  Assuming the low end, each minute of video is 16 MB and one 30-second ad is 8MB.   Our AT&T hotspot charged $55 (without subsidy) for 100GB of data per month.  So each MB costs about 0.00055 cents. In other words, that 30-second Old Spice ad is literally costing you 0.44 cents to watch.  Of course, this adds up, over a month, to quite a few pennies!

I Swore I Never Would Install Another Split-System (#8)

I haven't been posting as of late because I have been busy!

It seems like appliance follies go on forever.  We finally broke down and bought a new microwave.  Mark's Cuisinart (which he actually uses regularly) finally broke after 20 years - the safety latch is part of the plastic bowl and although they say it is dishwasher safe, well, the high temperatures tend to make the plastic brittle and the latch broke in several places.  I found a new bowl set on the Cuisinart site for $60 and the machine looks like new.

Yes, I contemplated buying a used bowl, but the folks on eBay wanted $30 or more for one, and the plastic on those was as yellowed and brittle as the one we already have.  Some were in fact already cracked and broken.  Despite the promises of that wonder-material, plastic does degrade over time, a process I call "plastic rust" - a topic of a draft posting I never finished.

The new toaster oven (free, under warranty) arrived and it works great.  I decided that it wasn't worth my time to repair a $59 toaster oven, so I gave the old one a toss.  The garbage man is going to start wondering why my trash is so heavy!  First a window unit, then a split system, then a toaster oven.  It is like I am throwing away bricks.

There is something pleasing about having new things.  It gets depressing to own things that are broken-down and don't work well or have broken features.  Whether it is an old car or a broken appliance, having busted-up stuff isn't always good for your psyche.  Sure, a "barn find" rat-rod is fascinating. But then again, hot steel floorboards and a "Texas Tan" (surface rust) are only charming for so long.  That new car smell can be intoxicating.

Of course, new doesn't always has to be new.  A lot of people throw away perfectly functional machinery only because they are bored with it, or their lease was up, or some other reason than being worn out.  A three-year-old car can be like new, as can be a three-year-old cell phone.  Why pay double for not a lot more?  And the upgrade from a decade-old appliance is considerable.

The split system I installed in the garage nearly a decade ago went kaput.  Spending over $150 on a new control board on the premise that it was not the inside control board that was broken (those are NLA) seemed like a sketchy proposition, particularly when the rest of the unit was a decade old and while not at the end of its design life, was getting awfully close.  So for about $800 or so, I got a new unit.  And this time around, I wall-mounted it, so it won't be collecting dead leaves and detritus on the ground - which may help extend its service life.

It is not an easy process, even though I was replacing an existing system.  The wall mount required drilling into brick, which requires some effort and some sharp carbide bits.  But it all came together in a couple of days.

This is the 8th split-system I have installed, and I think I am finally getting the hang of it.  I struggled with some earlier installs, dealing with leaks, until I realized that my tubing cutter was worn out and my flaring tool was kaput as well.  The difference between the amateur and the expert is in the tools.  An expert with crappy tools can be in a worse place than an amateur with new tools.  This time around, no leaks, right from the get-go. Pulled a near -30psi vacuum almost right away and held it for a half-hour without budging.  Put some pressure in it and leak-checked and no bubbles from the soap solution.

As I noted in my earlier posting, these things get gross over time, accumulating debris on the cylindrical fan.  So maybe even if they can last longer than a decade, it might not be a swell idea.  At least now, I know how to clean them thoroughly.  We never had that problem in the lab!

In fact, that is a problem in manufacturing research.  When you make things new, they are never dirty or clogged or corroded.  Sure, you can test in the "real world" but 100,000 miles of driving cross-country isn't the same as ten seasons of Syracuse salt and snow.  You can only emulate so much, which is why manufacturers end up with problems after a few years - problems that never showed up in product testing.

But eventually, things get old and worn and reach the end of the Weibull curve.  You can waste a lot of money trying to repair an end-of-life product, so just move on.  When that point happens is often hard to determine.  Repairs seem "cheap" compared to buying anew.  But a machine that is near the end of its design life is likely to throw you another big repair bill soon thereafter.  And then thereafter.  And thereafter.  Sometimes it is best to call it quits and start over.

On a happier note, consider how durable the human body is!  It can go for as long as 100 years before wearing out.  The ball joints on your car may be shot after a decade, but your hip socket may not need replacement for 70 years!  Pretty durable design!

If only God designed cars, instead of Darwin.