The power of pay, that is. Pay Power!
I went to the Pay Power website today. Faithful readers will recall that they are the people from whom I buy my monthly credit card.
In fact, the only reason I bought that god damned Canada Post card last month was that our usual outlets had no Pay Power cards.
But according to their website, there’s like five locations here in Richmond that still sell them, so hopefully Julian will be able to secure one for me soon and things can go back to normal again.
God, that Canada Post one sucks. The only places I have found that accept the damned thing are Amazon and Denny’s.
Meaning my dining in habit has had to be cash only, which more or less limits me to Pizza Hut as they are the only place I know of that still lets you pay via cash at the door.
There might be other places that do that. The Wing Kee, which is a Canadian-style Chinese place a few blocks from us, might still be old school enough to do it.
But their prices are insane now. They want $22.60 per dish. You want some chow mein? $22.60. Fried rice? $22.60. Mushu pork? $22.60.
That’s madness. The best spin I can put on it is that maybe they have shifted to being focused on large Chinese families and other large groups and so that $22.60 actually buys you a lot of food.
But I doubt it. They probably just charge more because they can get away with it in this delivery service bound era where people are just used to paying more.
Which is how I end up paying $25 for a McDonald’s order than would cost $15 if I was buying it in the restaurant.
I am paying for the convenience, I suppose. Plus I am paying the delivery person.
They should give us disabled folk a special rate, though. Because we are on a rather low fixed income and we don’t necessarily have the option to go get it in person.
That would be nice.
Today has been a little rough because I am all abuzz with anticipation like it’s the night before Xmas because tomorrow is Deposit Day and therefore the day when I will finally be able to order my fancy new CPU.
Pity it has to come from the US, with all the extra expense and hassle and wait that involves. Technically, the import fee charged by Amazon is an import fee “deposit” for what they will be charged by the Canadian authorities, but I am pretty sure that it’s not the kind of “deposit” where you get any of it back.
Like Jeff Bezos is going to give my money back once he has it.
I even looked to see if it was possible to transfer my Amazon.com balance to my Amazon.ca account, and unsurprisingly it is not.
If it was, they would essentially be an international bank, and that would be a whole huge hassle for the various Amazons.
I would much rather buy Canadian. Not just out of patriotism but to avoid the import fee and the extra wait time as the CPU crosses the border.
But my sister Catherine’s virtual gift certificate was for Amazon USA, so I am stuck.
It will all be worth it when I have a snazzy new computer! Fingers crossed.
More after the break.
Swing and a miss
I thought I was so damned clever.
Earlier today, I thought, “Wait a minute… my stupid Canada Post credit card works with Amazon.ca,,, so what if I can buy Skip the Dishes virtual gift certificates there? Then I could do an end run around my credit card issues. ”
I am so darn smart.
And lo and behold, they DO sell virtual Skip the Dishes gift certificates on Amazon.ca! Huzzah! I will be feeding my McD’s habit tonight!
So I ordered it, and the transaction went through, and I got an email receipt from Amazon.ca telling me I bought it and it had been delivered, so I figure it was al good in the hood, right?
But the actual virtual gift certificate never showed up. What the F?
So I went to Amazon.ca support to try to figure out what was wrong. And after a heck of a lot of poking around, I finally discovered that the transaction – for which I have a digital recept, mind you – did not actually go through.
Now, suddenly, Amazon.ca has a problem with my credit card. Well poop.
Luckily, I remembered that I had earned a free medium pizza via the Pizza Hut website’s reward system, so I was able to order a medium 2 topping pizza and a 591 ml of Diet Pepsi for like ten bucks.
Why ten bucks and not two? Because when you order via the Pizza Hut website, the delivery charge is eight freaking bucks.
Yeah, they obviously really want you to order through a delivery app instead. Which I would be glad to do if my stupid fucking Canada Post card worked.
The real kicker is that I can’t even check the balance on my Canada Post card because of how registration got fucked up, and the “forgot your password” system doesn’t work, and there is no way to contact a human being for support.
Ergo, I have no idea how much I have left of my initial $250 load. My best guess is that there is around $100 left, but I could be way off.
In fact, it could be that my card bounced on the Skip card transaction because I don’t have even $50 left on that Canada Post POS.
Which in an odd way would be a relief, because that would mean I don’t have to keep trying the card on Amazon transactions till one bounces in order to be sure that I have drained it before moving on to (hopefully) a new Pay Power card.
But of course, I can’t check the balance, so I don’t know if that is what happened.
Why can’t things ever be simple?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.