Not so Progressive Car Insurance - saving dollars in stupid ways

I recently started using Progress Car Insurance and I come to find out that they don't send you a copy of your policy or an insurance card.  You can get digital copies if you need them.   The part of that which annoys me the most is having to print out the insurance card to keep a copy in my car.  For the amount of money they save by not mailing me a copy of the card equates to many more dollars wasted for me.  It's a stupid pain-in-the ass policy.

They will tell you that you can just look it up in their app.  Guess what, I don't want their app on my phone.  I don't need another app on my phone. (Ah, this is the real motivation, to force me to use their app).

I also don't want to be fumbling with my phone trying to find the insurance information if I am in a car accident.  There is always a chance your phone will go missing after a car accident.  I was once in a car accident where another passenger in the car couldn't find the glass they were wearing because they were thrown out of the car.

This seems like an unnecessarily cut back in service.  If there is another insurance company who wants to sell me car insurance that costs $2 more than my current service, but offers to provide a printed copy of the insurance card, please reach out.

Linked-In has jumped the shark

It's time to recognize that all social media websites degrade over time, converging into similar crapified states that makes them pointless.  LinkedIn may have just jumped the shark and is headed into the downward spiral.

Today I received a sponsored message in my LinkedIn Inbox inviting me to find a love match at Selective Search Matchmaking (no link provided, intentionally). 

 LinkedIn, do you have no standards for appropriate sponsored content?  Shame on you.

There is an option to report undesired ads, but this is too little, too late.

DSW Coupons are Worthless and They Know It

My wife earned a coupon from DSW rewards for $30 off any purchase of $49 or more (some exclusions apply). I needed some shoes too, so we went to DSW.

I picked out a pair of shoes for $75 and she found a pair for $69.99.

When we got to the register, we could not use the coupon at all. My shoes were excluded because they were Nike. Her shoes were 30% off of the $69.99, which after the discount came out to... wait for it... $48.993, what a coincidence, just shy of the $49 minimum.

What a bunch of malarkey. I went home and bought my shoes on the internet for the same price.

Instead of "$30 off one item" the DSW coupon should really say "Come to the store and buy something for full price and get angry and disappointed at checkout"

I have no sympathy for these fraudulent and deceptive stores going out of business.

NVIDIA GeForce Experience is Lame

 

Dear NVIDIA,

How about taking some of your huge AI earnings and investing in some of your other products?  Your GeForce Experience tool is lacking in a major way.

GeForce Experience recently invited me to download new GeForce Game Ready Drivers for my NVIDIA graphics card, which immediately failed to install.  Why did it fail?  No clue is given by the generic "Error installing drivers"  message displayed.

The reason is that my GeForce Experience tool needed to be updated first.  How do I know this?  Not because GeForce Experience checks for updates, or tells you that new ones are available.  I had to figure it out on my own by going to the NVIDIA website and downloading a newer version manually.  After I did that, the newer GeForce Experience version was able to successfully install the new drivers.

This is simple to fix and unfathomable behavior from the NVIDIA GeForce Experience tool.

This really ruins my NVIDIA experience.

Venmaybe

 I don't understand Venmo.  Why does it exist?  Why do people use it?

One thing that is an absolute must for a financial service is that it has to be reliable.  Venmo is anything but reliable.  I will give a recent example from my experience.  I just moved to a new home.  I used Venmo to pay the movers 50% of the cost when they picked up my stuff.  When I went to pay them the remaining 50% on delivery, Venmo refused to make the payment.  Explanation given:  none.  I contacted Venmo customer support, and this is what they said:

I can see that you’ve attempted a payment, but our system will not be able to process this transaction. 
 
Although I don’t have a specific reason for why declines like this happen, it’s typically for the safety of our customers. 
 
It’s worth noting that this decline is only impacting this specific transaction, so you may not encounter this problem with future transactions.
 
If this issue continues, your next best option will be to work with the recipient so you can send this payment outside of Venmo. Keep in mind you can still receive payments and transfer any funds in your Venmo account to an eligible bank or card if needed.
 
If you have any additional questions, please let me know! Looking forward to hear from you.

If you can't trust Venmo to make a payment when you need it, and you aren't given any explanation for why the transaction was denied, it seems like a useless service to me.

 The other thing I don't get is the social aspect of Venmo.  Why do I need to see what my friends are using Venmo for?  I really don't care to see that "Bob paid Jerry for H
hemorrhoid cream".