CarShield: Always an easy go-to in a pinch

1.  You know the actual car bill is going to be really expensive when the mechanic uses three dollar signs, changes pens, and then underlines those dollar signs THREE TIMES.  And then doesn't even put a NUMBER on there, like this is information is too severe to be put in writing.  Want to know how much it's going to cost to fix your car?  You are going to have to get that information in person.  That's how big this bill is.  THREE DOLLAR SIGNS underlined THREE TIMES in DIFFERENT INK.  Just leave us a copy of your mortgage and your first-born child.

2.  I'm a little worried at the idea that there are actually people out there with old cars with lots of mileage on them who think that Extended Warranties like this are a good idea....because sorry, they just aren't.  They are really dumb, actually.  No insurance company is going to replace a $4200 transmission on a 10-year old car with 130,000 miles unless it's been draining you of big monthly premiums for years.  Otherwise...well, see that "Deductable May Apply" in the small print?  That deductable is going to apply.  Big time.

3. My parents get at least three calls a day from "easy extended warranty" companies offering to "provide" coverage on cars they haven't owned in years.  From the calls I've taken and managed to extend with "innocent" questions, the average monthly premium for "full coverage" on a car none of the choads on the other end of the phone have even seen is about $140 a month.  That's a LOT OF MONEY for something that will mysteriously fail to cover pretty much anything Too Bad You Didn't Read The Fine Print on the Contract which By The Way isn't Emailed to You until After They Have your Credit Card Number.  I don't know if any of these callers work for CarShield, but they might as well. They are all calling out of pretty much the same boiler rooms after all.

4.  Speaking of which, I had to call DirectTV today with a few questions about my mother's bill.  It took me almost half an hour of commercials (including one for a Medic-Alert bracelet presented by an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING) before I finally got to speak to someone about the issue.  I get that customer service centers aren't as crowded as usual because of the whole Pandemic thing, but why isn't this a problem for phone scam operations?  Is it just that the scam promoters don't care about their phone monkeys?

When YouTube "reviews" are just badly disguised commercials #1- Daily Harvest

I found this looking for an actual Daily Harvest commercial after seeing the ad for yet another Non Food Delivered to the Door of Rich White People service.  Then I watched this video and realized- yep, it's just a commercial for Daily Harvest trying really, really hard to be a Review.

Couple things. First, this clown gives away that he's doing a commercial for Daily Harvest literally seconds into this...um...."review."  He "hates making breakfast" because it's a "hassle" with all the "chopping," and he's "trying to eat healthy," etc. etc. etc.  Why doesn't he just eat a bowl of whole grain cereal with a grapefruit on the side?  No hassle, no chopping, very healthy.  Oh right- because this is a COMMERCIAL FOR DAILY HARVEST and the only simple solution to his "problem" is going to have to be Daily Harvest.

Second, this guy's enthusiasm for Daily Harvest doesn't even wait till he actually drinks the crap before breaking my Skepticism Meter.  The shipping was Super Fast, the "Welcome to Daily Harvest" advertisement inside the box is great, and it comes with a sheet of magnets- "Awesome!"  Jeesh buddy, why bother to even drink this stuff and risk your winning streak?  Just toss the box in the garbage and put the magnets on the fridge.  You're already a winner with Daily Harvest after all!

"This is cool, this is dry ice.  This is how it stays cold."  Um, ok buddy.  Yes, that's super helpful when you "come home from working all day," because it means your ridiculously overpriced smoothies haven't been ruined.  But it also helps explain why they are ridiculously overpriced.  Oh, but please continue.

For the next thirty seconds or so, this guy exults at the excellent wrapping to prevent leakage, and I note in horror that we aren't 90 seconds into this six minute video yet.  You know what, I'm going to assume he spends at least two minutes complimenting the font choice for the ingredients label and skip to him actually tasting this stuff.

At 4:53 he finishes a brief commercial for his Magic BulletTM smoothie maker to tell us that yep, the smoothie he makes sure smells fresh.  He invites us to smell his smoothie.  I really wish I were kidding.

He finally tastes the damn stuff at 5:12 of this six-minute video.  Shockingly, his verdict is "That's Awesome!"  Then he shows us how we can pour the smoothie back into the cup it came in- none of us would have thought of that on our own, for sure.

"And I'm out the door with America's best breakfast going on." After one sip of one flavor.  Yeah, this is "America's best breakfast going on"- and an honest review.  Suuuuurreee it is.  And oh hey what do you know, if you use his name as a PROMO CODE, you get three free smoothies "just for watching this video."  That's right- he ends his schtick by coming right out and ADMITTING he just showed us a 6:25 commercial pretending to be a review.

What did I just watch?  Five minutes and 12 seconds of some paid choad bleating superlatives about a product as he unboxes and prepares that product, followed by one sip which leads to that spokeschoad crowning his smoothie "America's best breakfast going on, here's a promo code." Where do I go to get that six minutes back?

Prevagen "Greg's Calling" commercial

Greg is sixty-eight years old.  What is Greg doing in his golden years?

He's a "substitute teacher, a motivational speaker and- most hysterically- a "Paid Testimonialist." (I spelled that right, despite the fact that a red line appeared underneath it when I typed it.  Because it's not a thing.  At least, it's not a thing you have any business being proud of, because it essentially translates to "someone willing to testify that a product works if you're willing to pay him.")

Greg is a Substitute Teacher.  That's awesome, Greg- I was a substitute teacher for two years in the early-90s, when I was trying to get my foot in the door in a school- any school- in Upstate New York.  I subbed more than 100 times in a dozen different schools.  The other subs I bumped into in those years were either like me- young, just-out-of-training kids looking for permanent jobs- or Warm Bodies willing to sit in a classroom picking up a paycheck pretending to be Educated Professionals.  Guess which one you are, Greg?

Greg is a Motivational Speaker.  Which means he's a guy who likes to spew bumper sticker logic at audiences for money.  Audiences of people who are so pathetic that they need a total stranger to give them hope that someday they might be capable of finding a purpose in life without having a fire lit under them by a total stranger.  Until then, they'll have an endless supply of grinning twits like Greg bleating "inspirational" garbage into their ears, or mouths- whichever orifice they choose to hear with.

Greg is a Paid Testimonialist.  I already covered this.  So I'll just finish by reminding everyone that this commercial is for a drug that Greg may or may not take himself- there's no reason to believe he actually does no matter what he says about it, because after all, he's a PAID TESTIMONIALIST along with his other non-jobs.  In the end, what Greg really is is unskilled labor who has found a way to put money in his pocket despite being unskilled (that's his true "calling.")  Good for you, Greg.  But your commercial didn't motivate me into looking into Prevagen, and I wish you'd stay away from impressionable kids and stop taking jobs better filled- and often desperately needed- by professionals.

What I can't understand about Select Quote Ads

Why are all the people in these commercials (who are in Excellent Health, btw) always so thrilled to be gabbing on the phone with a total stranger while discussing the likelihood that they are going to keel over within the next ten years and would like to make sure that the people they live with don't suffer any financial hardship when they do?  I mean, I'd get it if they looked pensive, thoughtful, concerned, etc.  I do NOT get why they look like they just won tickets to freaking Disneyworld instead of getting the specs on an insurance policy that will be total waste of money if they aren't fortunate enough to drop dead despite being in Excellent Health before it expires.

Yeah, but...it's still a Discover Card....

...which means the people who made this commercial know that after thirty-four years, their product is still viewed as the Brand X of credit cards, the item that is sheepishly pulled from wallets and purses and apologetically offered to cashiers all over the world by people who aspire to possessing a card that doesn't get wrinkled noses and condescending looks in response.

I had a Discover Card once- when I was just out of college.  Which is the time when it's ok to have a Discover Card.

I'll give Discover some credit, though- before it was introduced waaaayyyy back in the 1980s (come to think of it, I must have been one of the first people to even get one) there was no such thing as a No-Fee Credit Card.  Discover deserves credit (no pun intended) for forcing the Big Boys on the Block to offer one themselves.  But the thing is.....they did.  All of them.  I've had an American Express and a Visa card.  I've never paid a fee for either.  Yes, I know that they both have Extra Special Cards that give bonus points for travel and exclusive entry into airport clubs or whatever, but 99.9 percent of us don't care about that stuff and find the regular cards just fine.  Which means that the only reason why anyone would want a Discover Card kind of went away a long time ago.

So, um...thanks, Discover, for forcing open the doors of Mastercard, Visa, and American Express.  Decades ago.  I suppose you're the reason I have those cards today.  But now you have to find another way to convince me that I should carry a Discover Card.  These obnoxious, headache-inducing, insulting commercials sure don't cut it.

Brighthouse Financial's "Expedition" of Privilege

It's so heartwarming to know that when I've reached my mid-fifties, my 25 years or so of hard work at a job which allowed me to stash away tons of money in investments and insurance will enable me to retire and finally enjoy life because it was managed so well by Brighthouse Financial.  Because it can't all be about work, right?

Wait a minute- I already reached my mid-fifties.  I've already worked for 25 years, too.  So why aren't I retiring?  Oh, right- because I'm one of those Americans who while putting money away for retirement doesn't make nearly enough to even think about retiring in my fifties.  And I'm actually doing better than the TYPICAL American, who isn't saving ANY money for retirement and (if they were born around the same time I was) must wait until they reach the age of sixty-seven in order to start collecting what will be the main if not only source of their income, Social Security. 

But I'm not the intended audience for these commercials anyway.  Brighthouse Financial ads are aimed at people like this couple- Double Income, plenty of which is disposable, who have the luxury of planning for the future by depositing some of that excess cash with a broker and who might as well hand it off to Brighthouse Financial because We Manage Rich People's Money.  And this couple in particular SHOULD be planning to spend lots of money in their early retirement if they are going to go off on long treks on their own and jump head-first into unfamiliar bodies of water just on a whim.  Frankly,  I wouldn't mind being one of their beneficiaries.

Win Cleaner- Absolutely Nothing, at the low low cost of $19.99!

It's almost scary to think that anyone believed this thing worked enough to purchase it for twenty bucks, or ANY amount of money....

I mean, come on.  The big-time "clean your PC" scammers work from boiler rooms in New Delhi and are experts at convincing you to turn your computer over to them so they can "fix" super-dangerous items like "Registry Errors" which sound scary but are absolutely meaningless unfortunately the vast majority of Americans have no idea what they are and are easily convinced that they are going to eat their computers from the inside out while simultaneously sharing their banking information with the entire planet.  And then we've got the jokers who made "Win Cleaner," which is nothing more than a USB drive that pretends to do the stuff they used to pay those people in New Delhi to pretend to do.  Of course it costs "only" $19.99 instead of the $50 or more you'd pay those scammers in New Delhi- those people don't have to pay their phone banks, and that USB drive can't actually seize control of your PC and hold it hostage.  Put those things together and the makers of Win Cleaner are kind of forced to give you a "deal."

Not that the makers of Win Cleaner are actually taking customers away from the scammers in New Delhi, because once people dumb enough to buy this junk realize that it does absolutely nothing, they'll be easy pickings for someone with a weird name like Lenny Napoleon who claims to be calling from New York City but sure sounds like he's someone who grew up in....well, New Delhi. 

So if you're one of the hilarious people in this Obviously Old Ad (everyone's using a desktop here,) go right ahead and pay $20 plus Shipping and Handling for a USB that will give you some very generic information that has zero to do with your computer but will make you think you actually accomplished something for a few seconds.  I mean, it's better than spending $4800 for a new computer (like I said, this commercial is Obviously Old- $4800???)  If your only two choices are buying this worthless piece of plastic for $20 or spending several mortgage payments on a new PC, go for the worthless piece of plastic.   Just don't expect it to magically clean up all that junk which is actually slowing down your PC.  That's going to take actual virus protection which, btw, doesn't cost that much in the first place.