Before dawn tomorrow, an Uber will (hopefully) arrive to whisk me off to National Airport, where an American Airlines plane will (hopefully) whisk me off to Kansas City, where I will spend a week accurately (hopefully) scoring Advanced Placement Exams, just as I have every year Except the Two Of Which We Must Not Speak since 2008.
Which means a week of scrambled eggs, veggie sausage, and lots and lots of coffee and Diet Coke and (hopefully) not too much of the candy on the table, walks during lunch break and the gym and pool every evening. And no more screen time beyond what needs to be done to score the exams.
So, no new posts until June 9. Please enjoy the archives and see you back then (hopefully.)
If someone asked me while walking through some parking garage if I'm "4 imprint certain," I'd tell them that one thing I'm certain of is that a parking garage has an almost unlimited number of places in which to dump a body.
That being said, I'm less than two days away from heading off to grade AP exams for an 18th straight year, which means it's time to pick up another complimentary refillable water bottle with the College Board AP Logo stamped on the front. Back in the good old days, we'd also get umbrellas, backpacks, little blankets...and I still have my coffee tumbler from 2010. But since just before COVID it's been that water bottle and nothing but that water bottle. Oh well. I'd probably lose anything they'd give me within a few hours anyway. Unless they give us another coffee tumbler this year. That'd be nice.
If the "TUMBLERS!" woman is the brains of this company, I think I've figured out why the investors pulled their funding.
Meanwhile...yeah....I'm sure that the way to win back investor confidence is with junk swag like tumblers. When's the IPO, guys? I've got my money ready!
1. If Carvana makes you an instant, sight-unseen offer on your car, and you don't think you are being ripped off with a low bid, well, insert some cliche about a bridge in Brooklyn here. Earth to these morons: Carvana is NOT in the business of losing money. Carvana will NOT offer you one penny more than it thinks it has to for your ten-year old Toyota Rav4. If the offer was $16,000 (yeah, right) there is something seriously missing in this story. This isn't 2020 with COVID shortages.
2. Why do these people "need" to sell these cars? It's safe to assume they are paid for- there's no talk of negative equity or paying off bank notes. Why are you selling a paid-off car? Is it the obvious, depressing reason- because you want a new one to show well for your neighbors? It's like we are addicted to making payments. If the car is in such good shape that Carvana wants to offer you $16,000 why don't you JUST KEEP DRIVING IT YOU MORON?
One day, someone decided to make slippers that could be worn outside. On that same day, we collectively decided that the Hardest Thing To Do Ever was putting shoes with laces on our feet. It was like our 10,000 year Nightmare was Over and we had been rescued from the Agony that is Bending Over and Putting On Actual Shoes and Tying Them.
Some time later, we decided that Latin Women with explosive tempers are funny and entertaining. And some time after that, we decided that the whole Outdoor Slippers and Volcanic Latinas should be put into an ad to be shown during a Very Very Important Football Game because Reasons.
"Have you ever stopped to think why the average new car warranty is only three years or 36,000 miles?" Um, no- not really. But I'm willing to take this as something more than a rhetorical question and just answer it: The reason why new car warranties generally run three years or 36,000 miles is because that's the time and distance in which a new car can reasonably be categorized as "new."
Coincidentally, it's also a perfectly reasonable length of a car warranty. In three years a new car loses more than half it's value, but at 36,000 miles most cars are still fairly "new" in terms of wear and tear. The warranty is a nice shiny but basically worthless trinket that in the vast majority of cases will never be used. It's a Peace of Mind thing but if you get the oil changed and the other fluids topped off and the tires rotated once a year or so there's no reason why you should EVER need to use it, and I bet more than 90 percent of new car buyers never do.
Now, if you've got a car you bought new which is now out of warranty, you can do one of two things: You can put $99 per month into a special savings account as an emergency fund to deal with maintenance and keep your insurance up to date to deal with accidents. Or you can hand $99 a month (for the base-level warranty) to CarShield and kiss that money goodbye forever, because even if you do have a claim your chances of getting this scammy, regularly-sued company to pay out is next to Zero.
One ad has a guy tell us that he's "saved $2700" due to CarShield replacing his water pump and engine or something, but I bet that $2700 doesn't include the years of $99 payments. Because when you look at how much this "warranty" costs and how little it actually pays out, well, the Math doesn't Math.
The warranty that comes with the new car is fine. But buying a new warranty when it expires is just stupid, even if it's NOT CarShield (but it's especially stupid if it is.) Just take care of the damn car and save your money and stop handing it to a company that seems determined to hire every washed-up B-lister to pitch it's crap to the gullible and math-deficient. Times are tough. We have to do better.
A) has been scammed. She thought she was marrying a guy with loads of money, but as soon as they got back from their honeymoon found herself ordering furniture from Wayfair. I mean, come on- look at this guy. This is a seven-figure transaction.
B) is suffering from severe self-esteem issues. Again- look at him. And then look at her. What the actual hell? Is he hiding her passport? Can a neighbor call the authorities?
