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I've been trying out MyPoints.com lately, one of these marketing companies that give out points, sort of like rewards credit cards, for doing stuff through their website. And they lure you to their website by sending you e-mails about companies and offers, and if you click through to their offer page, you get 5 points just for looking.
If you're poor and can keep from buying things you're looking at, then eventually you can "earn" a gift card. Five points are equivalent to about three cents. So, your hourly salary isn't that great, especially if you spend any time looking around.
But you also get points for actually responding to these offers, and yesterday they were offering two points per dollar spent at Best Buy. And I had just seen that the movie "The Holiday" was on sale (really this time) for $7.49, and so I decided to buy it through their site. Best Buy lets you buy things online and then pick them up at the store. There's all this rigmarole where you have to print out a receipt to bring to the store and retrieve the item(s) you have put on hold. Normally, I'd rather just go to the store. And the extra points were worth maybe a dime, so this was arguably a waste of my time.
Well, today I went to the store, and they had a copy of the movie held for me and I bought it. And I also looked on the shelves to see if there were any other movies I wanted. There weren't. However, the space for "The Holiday" was empty, so if I had not gone through all the silliness, I might not have actually been able to get the movie today. And being able to get the movie feels like something.
And that's true even though I may have done something wrong because there is still no sign that I'm getting 14 extra points at MyPoints.
If you're poor and can keep from buying things you're looking at, then eventually you can "earn" a gift card. Five points are equivalent to about three cents. So, your hourly salary isn't that great, especially if you spend any time looking around.
But you also get points for actually responding to these offers, and yesterday they were offering two points per dollar spent at Best Buy. And I had just seen that the movie "The Holiday" was on sale (really this time) for $7.49, and so I decided to buy it through their site. Best Buy lets you buy things online and then pick them up at the store. There's all this rigmarole where you have to print out a receipt to bring to the store and retrieve the item(s) you have put on hold. Normally, I'd rather just go to the store. And the extra points were worth maybe a dime, so this was arguably a waste of my time.
Well, today I went to the store, and they had a copy of the movie held for me and I bought it. And I also looked on the shelves to see if there were any other movies I wanted. There weren't. However, the space for "The Holiday" was empty, so if I had not gone through all the silliness, I might not have actually been able to get the movie today. And being able to get the movie feels like something.
And that's true even though I may have done something wrong because there is still no sign that I'm getting 14 extra points at MyPoints.