Circuit City announced today that is is going out of business.

http://www.circuitcity.com/closed.html

I purchased one of these ES Robbins No Crack Chair Mats from Costco a few months back. Their claim to fame is that they will never crack. And they are backed by a lifetime guarantee. Well, let’s see… My mat now has multiple cracks - big and small - all from normal use (mat is on carpet with a standard office chair with rollers). So I figured I would look into taking advantage of the lifetime warranty. I visit the manufacturer’s site and come to find that they, in fact, do offer a lifetime warranty. However, they require a $20 shipping/handling fee to process the claim. Now wait a minute… if memory serves me, I only paid about $20-$25 for the mat in the first place. What kind of a guarantee is that? Guess I’ll be sure and look into the warranty in the future. What a rip-off!

I wish someone would have warned me about how slow Amazon is at getting cell phone orders out to customers. What a nightmare. Is it really that difficult to throw the phones in a box and send them out? Ugh.

If you are going to pitch your wonderful, new, free music download software to the media claiming to have all the major record labels on board, you should be sure you really do have them on board. Qtrax forgot to get its deals in writing. I’ll save the download until they get their act together.

I find it ridiculous that mobile phone providers have free reign to tweak their policies to their benefit on a constant basis.

Sprint sent out a postcard to customers stating that they will be dropping a few surcharges from future bills, but replacing them with some new fees. Many assume these changes are in response to a recent class action suit regarding Sprint’s surcharges. In any event, allowing these companies to flip flop and tweak fees is just unfair. Especially when the companies deny the customer the opportunity to withdraw from a contract when it is changed for the worse.

SprintUsers has a conversation revolving around this contract change and the possibility of getting out of contract without an early termination fee. In most cases, the company says it’s not sufficient grounds to avoid the ETF, but I feel customers shouldn’t stand for such unfair practices.

I, for one, will be keeping an eye on the topic to see how folks make out.

Legal downloads of music tripled in 2005. That’s only because it’s so damn difficult to find free tunes quickly. I, for one, have decided to use allofmp3.com for my downloading needs. Although it hasn’t been deemed ‘legal’ yet, it does the trick for me. Subscription sites and record industries need to get their acts together and come up with a business plan that actually makes sense. Forget this DRM nonsense. I’m sure they’d see their numbers increase even more.

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Pixar and Disney are in talks to merge. If this happens, all you iPod owners can be sure that goodies are to come. With Steve taking a spot at the helm of Disney, one can only assume that Apple will get dibbs at pushing content via the web and iTunes. I, for one, think the merger could only result in positives and look forward to some kick-ass content.

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