Eddie On Everything » deals

Finally – A Gas Coupon Worth Clipping, from Exxon

eddie — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:25:09 +0000

I’ve been posting silly gas coupons lately, mostly because I’m shocked that gas stations expect people to get excited at the opportunity to save a whopping 1 cent per gallon on their next fill-up.

The 1-cent-per gallon (limit 12 gallons) coupon from Holiday amounts to a savings of 0.28%.

I’m sorry, but that’s just plain offensive. No, on second though, I’m not sorry.

They should be sorry for expecting me to take their coupon seriously.

Because, honestly, 12 cents? Twelve cents?

A coupon from Fleet Farm Gas Mart was a little better – save 4 cents per gallon, up to 100 gallons. Still, it’s not a big enough savings for me to forgo the convenience of paying at the pump.

A reader recently sent me a gas coupon worth clipping. This coupon, pictured on the right, is from a local Exxon station and offers a 10-cents-per-gallon savings on up to 50 gallons.

Hallelujah!

At 10 cents per gallon, with no requirement to buy anything else, this coupon offers a savings of $1.70, or 4%, on a 17 gallon purchase.

Kudos to Exxon of Shoreview for putting out a coupon worth clipping. They are clearly serious about treating their customers with a little respect.

Let’s hope that more gas stations follow their lead.

More Silly Gas Coupons: Save 4 Cents at Fleet Farm Gas Stations

eddie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:49:19 +0000

My recent post about one of the most ridiculous gas coupons I’ve ever seen – Save 12 cents on a $42.50 purchase at Holiday Gas Station – has been pretty popular, so I thought I’d post another.

This coupon isn’t quite so bad, but it ain’t great. Act now and you can save a whole 4 cents per gallon at Fleet Farm Gas Station, up to 100 gallons.

I’ll at least give Fleet Farm credit for not limiting this to measly 12 gallons like the Holiday store. But come on – at $2.50 per gallon, this coupon only saves you 1.6%, or $0.60 on a typical 15-gallon fill up. I know what you’re thinking – “60 cents is better than nothing!” And you’re right, 60 cents is indeed better than nothing. With the 60 cents that you save, you could maybe convince the clerk to sell you half of a candy bar or something. But for my money, 60 cents still isn’t worth giving up the convenience of completing my purchase at the pump.

Ridiculous Gas Coupons – Save 0.28% at Holiday Gas Station, courtesy of Cub Foods

eddie — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:04:39 +0000

Who wants to save 12 cents on a $42.50 gas purchase? Apparently Holiday Stationstores and Cub Foods thinks you’ll be chomping at the bit for this little “deal.” (And I *do* mean “little.”)

After completing my purchase at the Cub Foods grocery store, the clerk made sure that I took this print-at-the-register coupon with me. ”Wait!”, she called out, you forgot your gas coupon!”

Hmm, lets see here – I’ll save one penny per gallon, up to 12 gallons. That means that on my typical 17-gallon fill up, I’ll save a whopping 12 cents. At $2.50 per gallon, that’s a savings of 0.28% on my $42.50 purchase. And to think, I nearly left this coupon sitting on the checkout counter! How could I be so careless?

“But you can use up to three coupons,” she told me. ”So you’ll save up to three cents per gallon.” Wow, 0.85%. Staggering.

These worthless coupons aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, yet they’re printed each and every time I make a purchase at Cub Foods. They actually expect people to save these little slips of paper, to carry them around, to purposely seek out a Holiday Gas Station, to forgo the convenience of completing the transaction at the pump – all for a measly 12 cents savings? Seriously?

Am I the only one who finds this incredibly insulting?

How to extend the life of your disposable razor blades

eddie — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:56:25 +0000

Razor blades are expensive. At an average cost of roughly $2.50 per “premium” blade (such as Schick Quattro or Gillette Fusion), a well-groomed man can easily spend hundreds of dollars on replacement blades each year. Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to maximize the life of your razor blades. In fact, I think I’ve discovered the perfect solution.

First, a note: Don’t buy razor blades on eBay

Whatever you do, do NOT buy replacement blades from eBay! (Ever!) Razor blades are a popularly counterfeited item, and, more often that not, the blades that you get from eBay will be fakes. These fakes are of very poor quality and will tear the hair right out of your face. I’ve been burned by this one before; believe me, you’d be better of shaving with Fred Flintstone’s clam than you would a counterfeit razor blade. If you see a deal on blades that looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

Think about it – if Walmart and Target, two of the largest retailers in the world, don’t have the buying power to get blades at a rock-bottom price, how does some guy on eBay have that pull? The answer is, he doesn’t. He is selling counterfeit blades, either knowingly or unknowingly.

A number of sites have info on spotting fake blades. Save yourself the hassle and only buy blades from reputable retailers.

Razor blades get dull

All sharp edges dull with use. It’s science. That’s why expensive knife sets come with honing tools. With a disposable razor blade, however, it’s not possible to re-sharpen the blade. That’s why your course of action is to fight off a sharp edge’s other enemy – moisture.

Water rusts your blades

Water causes oxidation, or rust, to develop on your blade. This rust dulls the sharp edge of your razor. A blade left damp with water will slowly rust away, thus dulling the cutting edge. The single best method to extend the life of your blade is to never get it wet. Of course, that’s not practical, so you could instead try drying your blade after each use. Unfortunately, with today’s advanced four and five-blade designs, that’s often easier said than done. Fortunately, there’s an even better way.

The best anti-dulling tool in your keep-sharp arsenal: Rubbing alcohol

If you want to keep your blades sharp for as long as possible, keep a small jar of rubbing alcohol in your bathroom and wash the blade with the alcohol after each use. I use a high-percentage concentration (93%) and simply swish the blade around in the jar after each use. This helps to clean the blade, removes excess water, and allows the blade to dry much more quickly, free of those pesky water molecules.

I have seen some people recommend storing your blade in an alcohol solution, but I don’t recommend this approach. Today’s blades contain carefully positioned moisture strips with which the alcohol will interact, causing them to warp and distort the face of your blade, leading to a very shoddy shave. (Trust me, I’ve been there.) The best technique is to simply swish the blade around, then place it in a drawer, where it’ll be safe from water and water vapor, until your next use.

Using this technique I have extended the life of my razor blades a bit. (I think.)

Google Nexus One Coming Soon? A Tale of 2 URLs

eddie — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:20:26 +0000

Android Guys reports that Google is set to release a new phone, the Android-based Nexus One, on January 5. They speculate:

Google will push full VOIP usage on these, meaning no voice/sms plans needed at any carrier. Voice calls will go through Google Voice on Data SIM cards and will provide unlimited free voice calling. And SMS is replaced by unlimited free Gtalk.

Interesting, no? Here’s something even more interesting – Google seems to have reserved a couple of URLs for the coming offer. I checked http://www.google.com/nexusone, and was received a standard 404 error, NOT the custom 404 page that Google normally serves up when a page isn’t found.

This is the standard Google 404 page: ( http://www.google.com/blah )

This is the (browser-generated) 404 page shown when looking at http://www.google.com/nexusone and http://www.google.com/nexus1:

Interesting, no? Whether the speculated January release date is correct or not, it seems that Google has reserved these 2 URLs, /nexusone and /nexus1, for something special.

Stay tuned!

How much does a fountain soda pop like Coke actually cost a Restaurant?

eddie — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:49:34 +0000

In short – not very much.

According to this article at Newsweek, the syrup to make a single cup of Coca-Cola costs $0.000052, or .0052 cents.

The concentrate for 70 percent of Coca-Cola’s 1.5 billion drinks served each day originates in the tax haven of Ireland, where enough concentrate for 50,000 Cokes costs $2.60—including labor. The concentrate’s main ingredient? Caramel.

That means that one penny buys enough syrup to make nearly 200 glasses of Coke!

Of course, that is Coke’s cost, not the restaurant’s. And the restaurant certainly has other expenses – the initial cost of the fountain machine, maintenance, electricity, etc. But make no mistake – fountain sodas are nearly pure profit for the restaurant.

I would guess that many restaurants make a healthy percentage of their profits from soda sales. Blogger Greg provides a little insight into the world of restaurant upselling.

A lot of good lessons there, but the key one was the “up sell”. And the up sell involved those items that cost very little to the restaurant, but had tremendous margins. Interestingly, turns out, you don’t make all that much on the burger, but if you suggest grilled onions on that burger (costs 5 cents, sells for 79 cents) there’s your spread. That shot of lemon or cherry extract in your soda for 49 cents, pure profit. And don’t even get me started about the margins in the deserts! My god, 100x ROI on the basic chocolate cake or ice cream Sunday. And fountain sodas? Like printing money…syrup and carbonated water, maybe 2-8 cents per glass, but you are selling it for $1. If only I could get margins like that in my business!

This comment thread at Reddit has a lot of great first-hand anecdotal stories as well:

Cosmic_Charlie
I was a restaurant manager for a while (yeah, it sucked). The 5 gallon boxes of syrup cost 40 or so dollars each. At 5-1 mix ratio, we got 30 gallons of mixed soda from each. If my math is correct, that’s 3840 ounces of mixed drink. Each 22 ounce glass held about 13 ounces of soda (fill it with ice of course.)This results in somewhere around 300 glasses of soda per 40 dollar box. That works out to about 13 cents a glass, not including CO2 costs, which were minimal.

We charged each person 2.29 a soda.

TheBlueberryPirate
A fast food franchise guy I knew once said the same thing. That McDonalds is the most elaborate Coca Cola sales operation on the planet, and exists pretty much to sell coke.

Yes, America loves its Coca Cola. But keep in mind – with fountain soda running $2.00/glass these days, a family of four that dines out twice per week will save nearly $1,000 per year by skipping the soda pop and instead going with water. Don’t get me wrong – I like a nice, cold, refreshing (caffeine-free diet) Pepsi as much as the next guy. But personally, I’d rather spend that $1,000 on an extra weekend getaway or two. Wouldn’t you?

Get Free Shipping at Staples.com

eddie — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:42:08 +0000

Staples.com already offers free delivery on all orders over $50. I found this little tip at Slickdeals.net that explains a trick you can use to get free shipping on all orders from Staples.com, even those that total less than $50.

The Trick:

Go to My Account > Personal Information
Delete any information in the field titled “Staples RewardsSM, Staples Teacher Rewards™, Tax Exempt, Customer Number”
Save your changes
Re-add the number
Save again.

After completing these steps, all orders should now show Free Delivery.

The original poster from Slickdeals, a user calling himself ” yuugotserved”, included a few screen shots as well.

Eddie On Everything » deals

Finally – A Gas Coupon Worth Clipping, from Exxon

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How to extend the life of your disposable razor blades

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