Terry
and I have a few inside jokes. One of them involves a wide range
of possibilities, from shipping fees and extra costs to enticing
offers and twists designed to get you in the door (but often delivering
very little once the mysteries behind the curtain are exposed).
It’s
a bit of a catch all for us. Offered up as a funny positive and
a cranky negative. It’s a summary in humor. A note of being tempted,
followed with a realization of being trapped.
“That’s
how they get ya.”
But
is it? Is that how they get you?
I
suppose it depends.
Over
on Amazon, even when you have free-two-day-shipping-Prime, you
don’t always get two-day-shipping and you don’t always get free.
I understand why this works as it does. Not everyone selling items
on Amazon these days is actually Amazon. There are outside vendors
listing things. Some products are heavy. Some products have to
be prepared and shipped from further away than you might be expecting.
So,
yeah.
And
yet, while the unexpected sets off the rolling of eyes when a
surprise fee pops up as you’re checking out, I don’t know if that
qualifies as getting you. (Then again…)
Have
you bought a new computer lately?
Good
luck finding one with a disc drive.
No,
really, best wishes. You’re almost likelier to find a car with
a cassette deck that’s part of the dashboard entertainment layout
than you are a computer with a built-in disc drive. (I said almost.)
But
there you are, with a ton of pictures backed up on discs, trying
to figure out if they still have any use. And… of course they
do. All you need to do is purchase that new computer, and pick
up that optional extra external disc drive when you do. No worries.
Right?
Right.
But that optional external drive? Yeah. Add on cost. (That’s how
they get ya.)
Do
you use apps? Chances are good that you do. On tablets and phones,
and now all over our computers as well. Washing machines and refrigerators
connect with us via apps if we so desire. So, do you use apps?
I’m guessing you do.
Everything,
and I don’t think saying everything is exaggerating by too much,
involves an app. I’ve actually gone to web sites only to find
out I can’t use anything on the site without an app. Can’t post
here without using the app to post it. Can’t register there without
downloading the app and creating an account with it.
We’ve
almost reached a point where everything is outdated within seconds
of its release. Seriously, how can supporters of movie theaters
even make the argument that people have to experience things in
theaters when so many people aren’t even experiencing things on
screens larger than a standard playing card?
I
love movies on a theater’s big screen. I love popcorn. But it
seems that more and more people are happy placing a small screen
on their lap with ear buds in place to watch a film these days.
And when businesses need to consider business, you go where the
customer is found.
A
few years ago, Terry and I were setting up a new television set.
I ran into the lovely dilemma of how to incorporate everything,
since naturally there weren’t nearly enough ports of the correct
style for the devices I was looking to incorporate. (How can you
possibly add a DVD player, video game console and television provider
with two HDMI ports? (Don’t… just don’t… don’t answer that. I
already know. There’s an app for it. There’s streaming for it.
Fine. I know. But I’m really just trying to make a point. Which
is…))
We
had an old video game system I was looking to include. Problem
though. It used RCA cables. (Those are the olden days cables with
red, white and yellow connecting ends.) No such place for incorporating
that type of connectivity on this television. But there was a
solution…
A
VCR.
Yup.
A VCR. (A VCR is… never mind.) The television did have a spot
to connect one item using a coaxial cable. So, I plugged the red
and white and yellow from the video game console into the VCR,
then ran the coaxial cable from the VCR to the television. (Take
that smart technology and app stores!)
Look.
I’m actually not mad. I’m not opposed to technology. This is offered
up almost completely in fun. But I do have issues with things
when they don’t actually do what they are supposedly designed
to do.
Remember
that external disc drive fun I mentioned a short time ago? One
of the solutions for your new computer is to purchase one. But—because,
of course—even if it is supposedly capable of playing a DVD, there’s
a really good chance that it won’t. That is, unless you download
an app.
Recently,
a friend got a computer, bought the external disc drive, and was
in the process of setting things up. He decided he wanted to have
the drive ready to play DVDs, even though he wasn’t certain when
he might ever need it to play them. Best to be ready in case you
do instead of sad because you can’t. But it wouldn’t play them.
The DVD playing disc drive wouldn’t play DVDs out of the box and
plugged in. Not without adding an app. Guess what he found when
he went looking for one?
There
was an app he could pay for. That seemed a bit of a waste. He
was more likely to watch a DVD on his television using an actual
DVD player. Or, if in real trouble, his video game system would
do it as well, since that already had an app for playing them.
Pointless to pay for it if all it happened to be was a safety
net.
So,
he looked at the next app, which was supposedly free. But it wasn’t.
Neither was the one after that. Or after that. They all said they
were free, but all turned out to be free trial versions of DVD
apps, each with specific limitations that prevented you from really
using them as anything but samples. If you downloaded any of them
for free hoping to watch a movie, you were going to need to download
another app or break out the credit card in order to see it.
Apps
and trial versions. Nothing is what it appears to be. And that’s
how they get ya.