Walter P.

I have been using the magazine's advice for many years but several years ago I decided to go with some of the Pro-Active ONLINE "Guru's" and got burned several times. Going back to my saved issues of Kiplinger's I found that had I followed the writers and experts featured in Kiplinger's, I would have done a lot better in my portfolios. Mind you - NO ONE, including such famous investors as Warren Buffett, have been right every time, all the time. It's an impossibility. But following advise from Kiplinger's writers and contributors; AND using some common sense, will help you more than MOST of the ONLINE fakes, frauds, and swindlers.

The only down side is that if you are set on a particular product, you may be disappointed. It may be, in your opinion, the best product on earth, but the buyers at Costco can wipe it off the map. Trying new products all the time is a hit and miss. Mostly hits but throwing out $20 worth of food can hurt.

This was the best travel service out there. But now that they got bought out, I hope they stay that way. However, if history and past experience is any indicator, most big companies buy the smaller "great" companies to either drive them into the ground and wipe out the competition, OR to skin them alive, take out the best parts, and dump the remainder. The big company will NEVER try to remake itself in the image of the smaller, better, company.

Most of the complaints and low stars that I see are because people treat this as a regular travel agency (which unfortunately it is slowly becoming but not because of their concept).
Priceline should be used like E-bay or any other bidding site. But you HAVE to be committed to what you want since you will be buying it at that price and under the conditions YOU agreed to. There is no second chances here.
The big problem I find is not with Priceline itself, but with the companies they work with. All major companies are aware of what Priceline is doing. If they are not, then they are still using Commodore computers.
Thus, since the major corporations which have bought out most of the competition, know what the deal is, they CONTROL what Priceline can accept and thus Priceline is becoming less and less relevant.
Only in times of severe OVERSUPPLY does Priceline maintain control and you get the best deals. Otherwise you pay what every other shmuck will pay.
Best advice: DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

Yes, there are some bargains at this well established site, but unfortunately they are few and far between. I have not found anything recently that I would consider purchasing. The prices are just too high for most products. For home design type products which are not easily comparable, they do have a fine selection; however, how many sheets or bath towels does one need?

Once they were great, then they were fantastic, then they were bad, now they are average. The only redeeming quality that they have is great seats. Their awards program is the pits. I no longer bother with it.
Delays? Part of their "service". They like to keep you waiting. Thus they hope to make themselves more desirable.

Very, very poor check out service. Whomever thought this one up out to be fired. On busy days the lines can stretch for at least 300 to 400 feet (no exageration). Tellers calling people in line one at a time and hoping customers see them waiving. Then people walking as far as 30-40 feet to a teller with all their products, children and/or family members can take 4-5 minutes.
All in all I have experienced waits of over 2 hours when I just HAD to get a product.

Selections are horrible. Rarely do you find a current movie. They even recycle 1950 through 1990 movies. Desperate? I think so.

I had tried Pandora when they first came on line, but then they became what appeared to be an advertising agency with lots of commercials. Now I can't tell what they are. They are certainly very, very difficult to sign up with. I've been using computers for over 30 years (yes I'm that old) and just a few days ago I tried to sign up on Pandora again and had the hardest time doing it. Why the complexities?

For a while, they were giving Home Depot a good run for their money, but somewhere along the line, they seem to have given up. Their prices, products, services, etc just are not living up to the standards they originally seemed to have set for themselves. Maybe they'll come back but Home Depot is still king.

Why would anyone go to a site that has the word "zoo" in it. All it does is reminds me of how we (humans) are treated by the travel industry but especially the airlines. Bad enough that they treat us like animals, but why would I want to be reminded of it.
My other objection is that I've never, never, never found a bargain on "tz" (I don't even want to use the entire word). Where do they get their offers?
With so many other alternatives, how do they survive?

This is only for the rich. If you are poor (or even average) - this is only good for catching your saliva when you start salivating like Pavlov's dogs.

The K-mart stores I've visited (3 in our neighborhood) looked like rejects of the original dollar stores (not the new ones). No rhyme or reason to their displays. People walking out with goods without paying ALL THE TIME because goods are store outside cash registers and clerks just don't care while security is virtually non existent. If there ever was a model for a non-store, this would be it. Would have done great in the old Soviet Union.

The one main problem I have with Amazon is their "fixed" reviews. 90% of the time when I write a 1 star review about any of their products, they REFUSE to publish it until I say something nice. They protect their SELLERS not their BUYERS, and this will eventually come back and bite them in the rear.
They appear to be in the market to control the entire online experience which is good and bad. When their investors were paying for the services (their stocks skyrocketed even though they rarely showed profits), they could afford to do this. But now that investors are starting to demand some sort of steady profitability and some return on their investments other than inflated stocks, Amazon looks like they are starting to worry and this is why they tend to manipulate buyer reviews.
If you don't believe this, try it yourself. Buy what you would consider a poor product and write a bad review. Fortunately, at this point you will get a refund from Amazon, but your review will most likely be squashed.

Walmart just opened a big brand new store near us (Teterboro Airport NJ) and initially I was extremely disappointed. I happened to look at the bikes that they had to offer and I was shocked to note that NOT ONE of the bikes had the proper tags (with price, make, model, etc) on the rack where the bikes were. As a matter of fact I could not find ANY bikes that met the descriptions of the posted tags. It was absurd. It's as if no one in the bike department had any idea whatsoever about the English language. Also this was a totally new store, but the bikes had missing seats, missing handlebars, missing parts, etc.
To this day (4 weeks later) they still have not straightened anything out.
Since 4 weeks ago, the store has improved tremendously and it's now looking better and better every day. But I went on a Saturday and it was literally a ZOO. People ripping open packages, taking things out of boxes, kids throwing things around, trash everywhere. The place does not need sales people, they need a police force to maintain some kind of order.
Even the Walmarts in Mexico were better organized than this one in one of the richest counties in the USA.
I guess Walmart attracts a lot of animalistic tendencies in shoppers. Maybe they should put everything behind bars or bulletproof windows.

The website was recommended by one of the online "gurus" to solve my problem with the installation of Windows 10 Updates. However instead of helping, it made things worse. Originally I only got 1 error message from Microsoft, but after installing Speedyfixer, I now have 2. I contacted their seller: Click Bank and all they did was say that there will be no further charges for future extensions of the trial period. (Like I would try to buy anything from them again.) They did not even offer a refund of the program that I paid for even though it did not work as promised.

I'm far from being a wine connoisseur, but I know what I like. However, bitter, acidic, tasteless, bland, flavorless, and plain wines are not in the category of my favorite wines. YET, Wine Spectator continues to give high rankings to these "junk" wines that I pour out after a couple of sips. Some of the cheap, bulk packaged wines taste a lot better that those that Wine Spectator has rated 89 and over. I no longer trust anything rate by Wine Spectator. The Wine Advocate and some of the lesser known but professional critics are better indicators of great wines.

The items sold on this site are available on a number of Chinese web sites at a fraction of the cost that you will end up paying if you win the bid.
The other problem is that the "collectibles" are pure junk that nobody wants. Who needs silver or gold clad anything? The amount of silver or gold that ca be recovered from these "Treasures" is so minuscule that no one would even try to do so. The postage is worth more than the silver or gold that is plated onto these items. Another problem is that the "silver" dollars that they are selling are fakes that have been plated in silver and make it look like they are the real thing.
As for the jewelry - you are better off buying costume jewelry at any "dollar" store.
If you go to Chinese web sites you can buy literally hundreds of thousands of watches that are far better and cheaper than you will probably find on this site.
If you read and do your homework about these auctions:
You're welcome!

I have been a Neat user for over 10 years (don't ask me why I like to be frustrated and angry - I just hate to give up). During that period of time Neat had 2 major changes in their software. I can't exactly recall when the first major change started but it was around the time they introduced the Cloud Service and "Sync". The sync was a disaster. The problem was that if your kept some of your old files in the computer as back up, Sync would find them and they would sync the old files and destroy your new ones. That's when I stopped using their cloud service.
The second major change was when they got rid of their strange, cryptic, and confusing file extensions such as. Nbak,. Nwdb,. Nwcab,. Nrx, etc. and started using PDF. That's when they dumped their old system into a "Legacy" program (they should have called it "prehistoric trash") and went into the new system that has NO RELATIONSHIP whatsoever to their old system. I've sent dozens of e-mails, tech-support messages, and even signed up (and paid for) their special "Neat Care" that was supposed to provide one with fast responses (acually, after one month, I never received even one response from this "Neat Care" department.).
Don't ever sign up for this "Neat Care" it's just money down the drain.
Anyway, no one at Neat was ever able to tell me if I could somehow combine my old files and the new PDF files into one comprehensive and complete record that I could use in case of any future IRS audits.
I just can't get that out of them no matter how many ways I ask.
I therefore assume that this cannot be done and you will have to keep 2 sets of files. One for Neat (old) and one for Neat (new).
Heaven forbid if they should ever change to another iteration of their system.
As for the program itself, it's the only one that does offer relatively "fair" sales receipts recognition which no other company has. This is why I use it.
However the recognition software is far, far from even a "good" category. It still requires hand corrections on almost every receipt. Also it does NOT remember mistakes. I have one vendor (local store) from which we have some 200 receipts yearly. No matter how many times we've corrected the store name, Neat just keeps using "avenue" as the store name. The strange part is that it does so with even famous world-wide stores.
It also does not recognize tax categories for particular vendors no matter how many time you change them.
When I received my new scanner and downloaded the new version of NEAT with the PDF extensions, I somehow received a Canadian Version of the program. This is strange since nothing in my orders ever mentioned Canada nor were there any Canadian addresses, or even transactions. So all the Tax Categories are now based on a Canadian tax system. How will that help me?
There are many more such issues but these can be relatively easily be corrected albeit with a lot of TIME and PATIENCE.
Last but not least I can't understand why Neat eliminated the "combine" feature that enabled the user to combine a couple of receipts (as you get in restaurants) into one entry. Or even combine a two page receipt into one. Why this change?

Closing stores is the only good thing that they are doing now. The rest are the same problems as those facing Office Depot.