The Sleeping Bear

In 1992, I bought a Ricky Ervins football card at a baseball card show for $6. Why? Ervins looked to be the next great NFL running back, piling up nearly 700 yards in his rookie season, topping it off with 72 yards on 13 carries in the Super Bowl. His rookie card, along with the famous Juan Gonzalez Donruss reverse negative, were going to be the centerpieces to my college tuition and financial freedom.

Three years later, Ervins was out of the league, never living up to the promise he showed in 1991. By the time he retired, his card was worth about as much as the dog shit that dots my backyard.

So I admit I’m not exactly the world’s foremost investment adviser. When I was young I invested in baseball and football cards, not quite understanding the concept that it was scarcity that drove up the price for older cards and that modern cards had more print runs than Lord of the Rings. When I got older, I invested in a pillow under my mattress, shaken by the Great Recession of ’08.

Needless to say, I’m not the world’s greatest investment mind.

But apparently I’m not alone. Last week, Standard and Poor’s, the rating agency, downgraded the US Government’s rating from a pristine AAA to AA+.  I’m no ratings expert so I didn’t have a clue what that meant, but the world was shocked. For the first time ever, the US had a less than perfect rating. Interest rates would shoot up, making it even harder to get money and potentially driving us into another recession. The stock market would crash, wiping out the recovery from the Great Recession. Gold would be worth more than a Honus Wagner in mint condition.

So I waited with bated breath over the weekend to see how the markets would respond. Stocks tumbled, as predicted. Gold inflated, as predicted. But, oddly, money flowed directly into the cause of the collapse – government debt.

Apple, you know, that company with $73 billion George Washington’s cluttering their bank account – so much money that they’ve decided to build a new corporate headquarters that doubles as a futuristic spaceship – saw their stock price drop 20 points, or more than 5%. A company that’s cultivated a cult following that would buy a dried up boogar if Apple slapped their logo on it and did some slick marketing, apparently isn’t a safe investment.

Contrast that with US government debt – that same debt that Standard and Poor’s downgraded – in the form of Treasury bills. Because money poured into them, the interest rate dropped as much as .2%. Why? Investors believe they are the safest investment money can buy. Safer even than a pillow of cash under the mattress.

Which is why I’m reconsidering my thinking that I’m a terrible investor. Sounds like I’m nestled smack dab in the middle of the curve. Time to invest in Toby Gehrhart rookie cards, baby!

Two years ago I bought a fridge. Mainly because I like to keep things like ketchup, butter and milk cold. That’s kind of what a fridge is supposed to do, right?

Size was also a consideration. Limited space required that the fridge be small. So we looked at models, including a nice model by Fisher and Paykal, a New Zealand company, that was the perfect size and sold for $1500. Go New Zealand!

Problem is, in addition to liking cold things cold, I also enjoy buying cheap shit. If I can save a couple pennies on something, I’m going to do it. Which is how I arrived at Best Buy, the land of cheap shit. Whilst there, I spotted a Samsung model that was the perfect size, but more importantly, the perfect price at roughly $900. That’s $600 in savings for those of you scoring at home. Guess which model I chose?

That’s right, the cheap shit model.

Big mistake. The cheap shit model just up and stopped working one day. Here’s how I found out:

SCLCommish: <Walks downstairs, groggy, hair a mess, in his favorite pajama onesy with feet><yawns>I’m hungry. I better make some cereal. <Grabs cereal box> It’s my lucky day. There’s only enough for one bowl. <Pours cereal into bowl> <Wanders over to the fridge><Stomach growls> Man, I sure am hungry. Can’t wait to eat me some tasty, tasty cereal. <Absentmindedly pours milk while staring out the window. Chunks of milk fill his bowl. Still not looking at bowl, doesn’t notice chunks, spoons chunks and cereal slowly into mouth>Sploof!<Spits chunks out, closeup of them sticking to wall>

Yeah. It sucked. It sucked balls. Luckily, it was still under warranty (a measly year, and we were only 6 months in), so I called the repairman and he repaired it free of charge because of the aforementioned warranty. Problem solved, right?

Flash forward another year. Fridge no workie.

So I sent Samsung a message asking if they would fix the fridge again for free. My initial warranty was expired, but since the flaming piece of cow dung they call a fridge had been repaired while under warranty, I figured I’d give it the old college try.

I was denied faster than a software developer trying to score with a supermodel.

I replied by telling them I would never buy another Samsung flaming pile of poo again. No big screen TV (which kills me, because they rock), no cell phone, no wash machine, no dryer. Nothing.

By failing to spring for a $200 service call on their shitty fridge that failed twice within two years of ownership, they lost someone who could have been a brand champion. Considering this company rakes in more than $200 billion dollars in revenue a year, $200 is about as insignificant as a singlel sperm on the set of a 500 person porno gangbang.

Look, I know they don’t have to fix my fridge for free. I also know that stuff fails – for all I know, this is the only shitty pile of shit fridge they’ve ever built (though the odds are stacked against it). I get that.  But if they’d done it, they’d have garnered a customer for life.

Instead, they’ve cultivated a pissed off former customer drinking warm, chunky milk and spewing his frustrations to the internet. And that’s not a good combination.

So, like Time Magazine before it, fuck you Samsung. You’ve earned the SCLCommish Go-Fuck-Yourself-Award for 2011.

Got a story to share about how shitty Samsung products are? Throw it in the comments.