and a bike

Maybe I can play the bank off against the credit card company.

I've been thinking about getting a bank loan to pay off all my credit card debt and my university fees.

Perhaps if I tell the credit card company that they'll lower my interest rate.

I don't recall, was it a pricey bike or just a beater?

$1200.

holy crap. a $1200 bike?

[img][650:436]http://www.echotrips.com/images/echo-people-full.jpg[/img]

That's $600 a wheel, Jesus.

it was given to me as a gift. it was bought at $1200 - in 1996.

Yep, that's probably a good'n. Mine would've been that much, but I got the frame "new" 2 years after it came out, outfitted with so-so parts, for like $350. Then I upgraded the parts that matter (most of them anyway).

Damn, man. Plans for the future? Insurance gonna cover DAT 12Hundy?

the deductable is $250. The renters insurance place said all I have to do is send them the receipt, which I have. I'm not sure how much $$ they'll give me for the replacement of it though, since the bike is 9 years old.

They better get up off they ass and give a man $1200. Bikes ain't cheap these days.

Maybe you can score a big wheel.

no shit. I have a feeling I'm going to run into a roadblock w/ the clubs, though, since I don't have the receipt for these clubs that were a gift 2+ years ago. They can't expect for every person to have a receipt of everything they've ever owned, gift or not.

if they give you the full $1200, even after deducting the deductable you'll be able to get a better bike for $950 than a $1200 bike from '96, I'd guess, so chin up, little man!

but... a $1200 bike?

dude, it was a gift. my friend who bought not only loves bikes but owns five of them. he's the one that just said, 'here, have a bike"

Dude, it is SO easy to spend $1200 on a bike. If it was a mtn bike, then that gets you something really damn good but not insanely good. If it was a road bike, it would just barely get you in the door of "good."

i'm just messing with you ryan.

squirrg, sounds like you've got an economically unhealthy case of two-wheeled vehicle elitism.

fyi, regarding rights with credit cards... Yail wasn't lying yesterday. Clark Howard is the man.

http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/category/7/40/224/

Also, check out bankrate.com and cardweb.com for the best credit cards available, with the lowest rates, annual fees, etc.

well, they're certainly not philanthropists.

There's 2 good ways to do it, and everything else is a waste. Either buy the best cheap-ass beater you can and get the most bang for your buck, or get something really well-made with tons of goodies on it. Everything else is some middleground combo of the two... a good name on a so-so bike, or a decent frame with shitty compnents that wear out in 3 years, etc.

On one end of the scale is philanthropy, on the other end is pirate-ism. Each company gets to pick where they stand between the two. The closer to Pirate they go, the more $ they make, and they are, after all, businesses for profit.

i think a lot of businesses are on the pirate-end and almost none on the philanthropy end.

i'm an active pirate-ist.

yeah, i could see spending $1200 on a nice bike. that's actually kind of cheap, as far a bike prices go nowadays.

also, i hate credit cards, mostly because i have no self control. it's nice that as bad as my debt is now, they're still sending me credit card offers.

There's a third factor related to whether businesses incur peoples wrath whilst aggressively pursuing profit, it seems to me, and that is what their "clincher" is.

Take Blockbuster. It's doomed. Dead, done, gone, toast. And the reason is that their business model was only kept alive by late fees. Without them, the whole thing begins to sink (which it is currently doing at an alarming rate). People hate late fees. When you build the whole ship around something people can't stand paying, all it takes is an alternative that gets rid of that thing, and you are Fizzucked. And they are. The only hope they have (had) was to IMMEDIATELY copy the other model (netflix) and try to out-name-brand them, and they fucked that up too, by trying to sneak late fees into it. Then they got called on it, were sued, lost it, etc.

Same with wireless. Speaking from experience, they profit from 2 things, and neither of them is your regular recurring service... one is overage, and the other is data/add-ons (txt messaging, pic messaging, etc). If nobody went over their planned minutes, every major carrier in the US would start showing a loss that DAY, not that month. They've gotten used to it, built it in, cut everything else so close that it's all that keeps them afloat, and if anyone ever gets clever enough to build a model without the fees (not likely, but if) then they're screwed.

edit: if the analogy wasn't obvious enough, 24% interest rates are just fucking greedy.

Ok, it's probably different w/ other companies, but MBNA does not give a break if you're paying off the entire balance unless you are late, which doesn't make any sense but what do I care that shit is gonnnneeeee gonnnne awayyyyyyyy