So instead of ranting I actually have a money saving tip. Last Saturday I finally decided to get the knocking sound on my van fixed. For the longest time I thought it was the AC compressor which would require a lot if work and what I've calculated up to 300 dollars to get it done. Maybe more. Well I finally decided to look elsewhere for the noise and found that the Alternator was making the noise. I looked on line(which is where I always start) to get a quote to get an idea of how much I was willing to spend. I found that the average I was finding was around 119 which put my spending limit to around 129. I was willing to go to 139. So I go to the auto parts store and have them test it to determine if Infact I was correct about the noise. I was and oddly it passed as a good alternator. So the employee finally quotes me a price of 179 dollars without including tax! Total out the door price would have been 191.26.
For you Auto parts dealers. How the hell do you guys figure that an Alternator is worth that much! Rental space? health insurance? wages? Bob's salary who is head of some department that doesn't make sense and he's overpaid anyways? Although they will never see this post here is a tip. I doubt auto parts dealers can offer the same price as an online dealer. I know that. But..what about at least protecting your sell through haggling. I was willing to go to 139. There was no way that your employer through some dicount can't offer me that? They never discussed a core charge either. I didn't know if that was the price with the core or without. So in the end I won. My alternator still worked it just made noise so I put it back in my van and ordered a part for 111 dollars. Free shipping. 80 dollars difference. So look around.
My other money saving tip just happened over the weekend. My wife is going to have a baby. (post to come about my feelings on that) and she requires some pretty Expensive pills to get her through the pregnancy . We are not going to be using her anti nausea pills which were originally 40 dollars a pill and our co pay was 8 (before Obama became president and made my insurance more expensive) because they have been proven to harm the baby. We do need progesterone which is up there in the more expensive catigories of pills. My first quote with insurance was 182 dollars. my advantages were that that amount would go towards my 6000 dollar deductible. After I hit my 6000 dollar deductible everything is covered. I more than likely will not hit that this year and even if I did I would have just over a month to take advantage of it. So saving money is 2nd priority to making sure the baby is going to develop strong.
So I looked online and found a prescription discount card that had a price quote of around 60 bucks when it was all said and done I ended up paying just under 98 bucks still Almost 50% savings but I'm not satisfied. I still wonder if Infact they could of gave me the quoted price or just did a bate and switch tactics on me.
So look around. I saved over 140 dollars in 2 weekends. More money saved for the baby to come.
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