You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Let's talk a little bit about tech.
We're going to talk a little bit about tam MoU and more with Marshall Collier, who joins me in studio as she normally.
Does on a Thursday. Could even me, Marshall Callier.
I am, We've got my favorite topic.
Didn't we talk about this?
I mean we kind of like previews, We were like a psychic or something clairvoyant.
We mentioned both Shine. I guess that's how they pronounced it.
Shine.
Yes, Shine, Shane ran it through a shine.
Yeah, I ran it through a thing ye okay, Shine and Timmy.
We talked about them being questionable last week sketchy, and yesterday two leaders of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission are calling for the agency to investigate both Shine and tim after quote unquote deadly baby and toddler products were sold on both websites. We knew that they were questionable, shady, sketchy, but now we're not the only ones saying that they're questionable, shady and sketchy.
Well, I wanted to add a little something that isn't in the news that we know about and it goes on. You know, they said that they sold cushions for cribs right now, don't you know that the companies who had these cushions for cribs sold them off somewhere. Obviously the Chinese manufacturer kept making them, but before the rule is passed, they're often them off to dollar stares. Where do you think some of that merchandise comes from?
Also, that's how they can sell products for ninety nine cents or a dollar wink.
Wink, Well no, not even wink wink. You know, and it's a pretty good deal. But when you look at some of the dangerous products. And we're talking about Shine and Timmu, which let's take it for granted. Let's talk about Amazon for a second. I love shopping Amazon. I love unique fashion. That's why I've never downloaded Shane's Shine Shane Shane. Yeah, I've come back, Shane. I've never downloaded their app. But my husband can tell you that I
have bought what looked like good fashion. I'd open up the plastic bag and a stench of chemicals would seriously, I meanlie so bad. I'd have to close it back up and I'd try to right back to Amazon Fresh, and you know, of course they didn't care. But the point is when the merchandise gets to Amazon. Let's say you're an Amazon FBA seller. An FBA seller is somebody who buys a bulk of merchandise, they ship it to Amazon.
Amazon charges them rent for the storage square footage, and then they'll ship the items for you.
Okay, not bad. It sounds sounds like a good deal.
Yeah, well, I except they keep raising the rent for the square footage, so it's a really bad deal. But so a lot of these people look for real bargains so that they can make a big profit on Amazon. Now I'm not saying that anybody is selling deadly baby, baby and toddler products, but in the entire world of dangerous products, somehow I might think, where does it all go? Does it just vaporize? Somebody buys it. That's called liquidation.
There'll be a liquidation sale and somebody will say, Okay, I'm buying it for recycling quote unquote right, and turn around and sell it, maybe on Amazon. Because Amazon does not inspect everything that walks through the door.
No, that's why they just guarantee right the product. But they're not going to expect.
It right, and the seller will get in trouble if they have too many complaints against them. And you notice that because the sellers will off and write something. If you have a problem, come to us directly, blah blah blah.
So just know.
China for a while, I would say about five years ago, was on the road to making really good products. They had good electronics, they had good things. But because of relations between our country and China, there was an embargo. And when the embargo happened, they no longer had the market for the higher line goods. So there they go back to their roots of making cheaper China goods which
they used to make. I mean, there was a book written, no Longer Cheaper China as they were doing their rise, and I was there then and it was they were making great products, but no Shanghai incredible stuff, but we blocked it. Other countries blocked it. So now they went back to their roots. Do you know there's a city in China. I've been there. I love art. It's a little city of painters and they have stalls one after the other. And one stall is a guy who paints
Van Go, and there's Van Go's sunflowers. There's another guy who does Picasso's whatever, and they each specialize in a couple of different paintings, and you can go there and these guys will paint you. I have one too at my house tomorrow. Lumpika copies that are beautiful, and that's what they did. China has always been entrepreneurial, but because there is no regulation, they can put out crap and get away with it.
So that's why when I go down to let's say, the garment district, and I can get Louis Vitan, but it's not exactly Louis Vutan.
Well, I do have to tell you something. This is terrible, but thank goodness, and I miss you, Barbara. Sorry, I'm going to tell you the story. So Barbara Walters and I grew up in the same area. She's much more
mature than I was. And I was on the Today Show with her and she had one of those air Mais purses, one of those sixty thousand dollars jobs, and I sat there and she said, oh, here, take it, look at it, you know, And I'm playing with her purse and the whole thing, and she turns to me and she taps my shoulder and says, really it's a waste of money. Go get a good copy in China. And that's the truth. And I've seen actually the counterfeits in China come in different grades. It's a whole thing.
There is.
I think it's the night crew from the purse manufacturing company.
Just sorry to jumping in it. But it's not just China.
Well, I was just in Insann out of Mexico and you can find counterfeit passable, not high quality, the passable counterfeit versions of just about every bag from Coach chanell on down. Don't ask me why I know that. But I'm saying it's not just China. It's a cottage industry.
Oh it's But like you say, there's there's different qualities and some of the quality that I have seen because I know the different things to look because I've been an eBay seller and I you know, looking for bargains and things like that. I wouldn't sell them. But yeah, there are really good qualities. And I have a couple of fake bags and now I can't tell the difference between the royal ones and the I can.
It's called the price, the forty dollars, that's the difference.
It's when they're sitting in the closet for a while.
You know, you don't know.
But the whole thing is I wonder what genius it was that figured out that toddler hoodies with a string to tie around the net would be a strangulation issue. What genius was that? Why did we have to pick on China for that. I've seen little babies running around those things.
On they are kind of popular.
Yeah, And why is that the part of the core of the Consumer Product Safety Commission? I mean, my goodness, why aren't they protecting us from those things in the US?
I suspect that you have an answer for that, and you're going to tell us on the other side of the break, Yeah, I do.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on Demand from KFI AM six forty.
Marshall Collier joins me in studio on this Tech Thursday, and we were talking about the questions sketchiness of Temu and Shine. They're very popular sites in this online marketplace and people sometimes from what I hear, you can get some tremendous deals. There are questions about the quality and obviously safety of some of the products which are being sold and Marshall Callier, I bow to you on this because you have far more experience in this than I do. Well.
I've written since nineteen ninety eight on e commerce. I wrote the first eBay for Dummies book and the tenth edition. So this has been my research for years and years and years, and I do know there's a markup in everything. And like I said, when markets lose a product, they have to sell it to someone. It gets liquidated to someone. And now we have the little street vendor places who are selling it. You know, everybody says, no, it's all stolen.
It's not all stolen merchandise. It's all merchandise that has been liquidated to the penny. Or they've bought a palette of let's say, broken vacuum cleaners, and they know how to fix the vacuum cleaners. They fix them and they sell them. I mean, this has all been going on. And just because you know, somehow we crack down on china for little hoodies for toddlers because it has a string around it. And how many of those of you seen since this is forever since forever, right, but you
know it's it's bad. We shouldn't allow it in this country. But let's use another country, and I'm not even saying China. Let's use a competing marketplace to make the bad guy, and kind of that's what we're doing now.
Again.
I gotta tell you a lot of the merchandise from China is really cheap garbage. But the dress you can buy on Shine for ten bucks, you can go to Amazon and buy for thirty bucks because you you have a couple of steps. Now you see somebody has imported it, you know, bought them by the dozen. Then they sell them on Amazon and it's a whole new product. You ever noticed those weird product brand names?
Yes, I do. From where do you think they come from?
Right?
Right? But I kind of maybe it's just me, But I don't have high expectations on certain types of products that I'm buying. If I can get it off Amazon. Like, for example, I bought this tripod for to hold my phone ten dollars. It's going to arrive at my house tomorrow, I don't have high expectations. If it can do what I needed to do, then fine, But I don't expect
it to be of high quality. If I wanted super high quality, I would have gone to a legitimate retailer locally and physically put hands on it and then made that purchase.
Yeah, And I mean I have bought you know, the circle lights, Yes, five those ring lights, right, I have those at home. I have the desk one. So whenever I do a video, I have the right lighting.
I don't know.
And then I go do a professional interview with somebody and they have the square led lights and I said, they the crazy cubes and everything. The heck, let's make the person look really bad.
Folks.
Let me tell you, if you're doing your own video at home, you need the circle light.
You really do.
But another thing our government came up with about China which made me laugh so hard. This is part of the big drum that they're beating. The reason they can sell ten dollars dresses to the United States is because of the deminimous Duty program. Explain that, please, right, and what is that. I'll give you a real easy way. You've ever been out.
Of the country, Yeah, just got back last.
Week, you know, and you fill out that little form I have bought, you know, to declare yeah, declaire right, And there's a number eight hundred dollars that if you buy more than eight hundred dollars, or you declare more than eight hundred dollars that you have to pay something like a three percent tax up up to one thousand, and then it goes. That's all it is. This eight hundred dollars magic number is nothing new again, which all of a sudden we are jumping on. People have been
using that eight hundred dollars for years. Twenty years ago in my eBay business, I used to order from a manufacturer in China some photography equipment we were talking about, and I would sell it online and I'd order a palette and I'd be darn sure that my order was under eight hundred dollars. Everybody's known this, it's been no secret for years.
But you could do that in perpetuity. Just make sure each order is under eight hundred dollars and you're good to go.
Now.
Can you imagine how much stuff TAMU you'd have to buy.
To get an eight hundred You can start your own store.
Right exactly, you know, and you're talking. You talked about getting that camera holder. We have honestly switched to brand names again, not Bill and Howell, because I don't know what the heck happened with that company. If you're seeing their ads on.
TV, I'm not having.
I know, somebody bought the name and here's the bill and hole thermometer. Now it's what I thought it was a camera, but no, it's really really interesting. You're gonna have to start believing in brand names again because too many times that you're burned on cheap purchases. You're finally gonna say, I'm gonna buy from Zappo's.
Yeah, but see, I don't spend me.
I don't spend large quantities of money on non brand names. Like if I'm gonna buy that phone, I'm gonna buy it from the legitimate Google, you know, distributor. Or if I'm going to buy a laptop, it's going to be a think Pad or something like that. You know, these are brands that I can trust.
I agree one hundred percent. Well, you know, And it's funny. I was listening to talk radio this weekend and somebody went on this long rant about how they bought an iPhone off eBay and it wasn't what it was and though they were ripped off and oh how horrible, and this is why you shouldn't shop on eBay.
Hello, I would never buy an iPhone on eBay.
You're safe because eBay has a one hundred percent money back guarantee. All you have to do the minute you do it is you go to the transaction on eBay, you click a link, it takes you to a thing, you upload a picture, and bingo, I get money.
I'm with you. I'm saying I know that I'm safe on eBay. I'm saying I'm not going to make a seven eight hundred dollars purchase.
Okay, on eBay, I have I sold a four thousand dollars. We'll talk about.
Ooh, we got to do that one next week.
Then my eBay history is hysterical. But hey, so much to talk about when it comes to ecut this kind of stuff. But just remember this eight hundred dollars has been around forever. Now we're using it as a target against whoever it is. I think they need to come up with some better stuff.
So the I guess the takeaway is stay away from shine, stay away from Exhambo.
Don't even put it on your phone.
Folks, really, but if you are going to use them, know what you're getting and where it probably came from.
And it's probably of lesser quality and.
Know you're paying with your data when that app is on your phone.
Marshall call, You're always great to see you.
I love talking to you.
MO.
We should do this again next week.
Let's do.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
And if you're a sports fan like me, you know you know college football has started. Professional football started tonight. As a matter of fact, Kansas City and Baltimore they're playing right now on Thursday Night football. And if you have direct TV, and if you're living in Chicago, New York, Philly, San Francisco, or here in LA, you probably are struggling to see these games. I say struggling because there are other options, but you're not going to watch it via
direct TV. You might have heard of this story, but I want to give you the latest. Let me just
start off, though, with the basics surrounding it. DirecTV and Disney they're struggling to negotiate a new contract following direct TV, satellite and streaming services which includes AT and t's U Verse and others to broadcast ESPN, the Disney Channel FX and other Disney owned networks which include ESPN two, ESPN Deports, ESPNU, ESPN News, ACC Network, SCC Network, Disney Junior, and National Geographic. All of those channels are blacked out right now. That
is if you have direct TV. There are ways that you work around it, but not through DirecTV. Now, what can you do to get your Thursday Night football or Monday Night football, or if you want to see the games on ABC on Saturday or Sunday, the college football games, pro football games on Monday Night football.
Here's what you need to do first.
You just got to keep listening to the later with Mo Kelly because we talk about this stuff.
All the time all the time.
You can get a direct a digital antenna and those are like maybe seven or eight dollars. You can plug that into your TV stick it near a window, and you can get all your local channels for free.
Well, Mo, what local channels are you talking about? I'm talking about some seventy local channels.
It's probably more than that, where you'll have your customary two, four, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, but you also have these substation channels where they show old movies, classic movies. It'll be like four dot one, four dot two right after NBC which is four channel four, and you can watch local programming in that way.
That will give you your ABC channel.
Or if you want to stream, you can obviously get ESPN Plus. You can just get a short time subscription there and by the time that, let's say you have a seven day trial subscription, you can try that and hopefully the next week DirecTV will have come to some sort of deal. Or you could do it like me and just move your whole life to a streaming service because I left direct TV many years ago. I got tired of dealing with DirecTV and everything that they did.
So I have Sling TV and I absolutely love it. And I went to Sling because I wanted Lives sports and they have some great sport packages and you can get all of these channels.
I think it's an add on.
I think it's maybe ten or fifteen dollars, So you could probably have Sling and this add on for like thirty five dollars at most if you want to keep it for the whole month, and then you can watch all of the channels that I just told you.
Now, if you're Mark Ronner, you don't give a damn about any of this.
But if you're a sports officionado a true fan I know, which is short for fanatic like me. Then you have to be able to watch your Thursday night football, which is going on right now, your Monday night football. You got to watch your SEC football on Saturdays. You got to watch USC football Big ten. You have to watch all of your sports and we get that's not even talking about like the Major League Baseball Game of the week, which may be on. This is how you have to
work your way around it. Direct TV is not the way to go. And Stephan, are you still with cable or have you completely left?
No?
No, I have had a saying like you. I haven't had DirecTV in probably four maybe five years.
Yeah. All streaming.
Yeah, I've been streaming I want to say for about twelve thirteen years. And in terms of entertainment choices, is the best decision I've ever made.
I was gonna say there was a time where I was had a little bit extra money. I thought, you know what, let's see and my dad still has it. But I'm going through it and I'm like, I think about how I am at home. I can choose exactly what I want to watch when I want to watch it, versus waiting for them, whether it's a rerun or not. I just wait, Oh it's premiere tomorrow, okay, And I watch it late night, early morning, and I'm like, yeah,
this doesn't It's not worth it. The Direct TV model is not It is just nonsensical.
Now.
What I mean by that is, I don't know if they still charge for it, but I know, up until very recently, I know they did where they would charge you for HD. You can get a digital antenna and get HD right now for free, for free. And the fact that the people pay for it, it's just mind boggling. And I know they still charge for their DVD or you know, their digital DVD. I don't know if they have a physical or or excuse me, digital recorder. Oh yeah,
a digital recorder. You I have mine for free with Sling TV.
I you know, I don't.
I don't know why people, the people that I heard from that are so angry about I can't believe that I can't watch the USC game or I can't watch Thursday night football because of this thing going on with Direct TV.
It's like, sorry, you're a sucker.
There are too many options to work around this, where you could have been watching this game, which is on ABC right now. Just get a digital antenna, or you can sign up for ESPN plus the trial, or you can sign up for Sling TV for a week. You know, there are too many ways to get around it, and I would encourage you to do that, and then you can see what you've been missing. As far as just
ease of watching your programs. I meant to say DVR, not DVD, where you can record your programs and you can have your programs anywhere.
I was when I was.
Getting ready for the show tonight, what was I doing? I was watching the freakin' football game on my laptop. Thanks to Slaying TV, I didn't have to worry about direct TV and these you know, contract disputes. There are too many ways around it if you at least learn how this television thing has evolved. Now, if you're like Mark Roner, you don't care. You just have movies.
That's it.
Well, not about sports, but there's so much to watch. I mean, I know people who don't really watch their checking account, don't care what they spend, and they'll just get the whole package of everything and not use nine tenths of it. That's insanely wasteful to me. Now, what services do you have? I know you told me, I just can't remember. Well, I have kind of a patchwork because we share a house with our landlady, and we also use you know, like a couple friends accounts for different things.
And I think less I say about that though.
The more I have is a loaded term use obtained, have access to How about that procure. See back in the day, we used to just steal people's cable. We'd splice the signals, those splitters. Yeah, I've got that. Yeah, I've done that. I've done it too. I mean the statue of limitations is long gone on that. Yes, but you can get anything you need one way or the other. I mean, if you have to, you can rent stuff.
But stuff pops up on YouTube. I mean, for God's sake, And my two B watch list alone is like two hundred and seventy seven items. So I could dine and still and I get to the end of all the stuff that I've already got lined up. We're at a point now where it is literally a lie to say there's nothing on to watch. If you can't find something that you want to watch, it's you there's something wrong. With you because there's too many services, there are too
many ways. Look, there's not a TV show that I've wanted to watch that I couldn't find at a moment's notice, old or new. It could be a classic television show, it'll be on one of the streaming platforms that I have. It could be a new television show. You can find the most recent episodes on Hulu or Peacock. There's no excuse if you know what you want or the type of entertainment you want.
There's never been a night that I can think of, well, there's just nothing on.
No.
That means I'm indecisive and I don't know what I want to see well, And.
It can be hard to keep track of as well, because we have these conversations like, Hey, I just canceled Peacock, but we still have Paramount Plus.
Am I paying for that? No?
I'm paying for that. Oh I didn't realize you were Slow Horses has just started season four. I have to see that. I cannot miss that. Oh yeah, the landlady has Apple TV Plus so we can watch.
That, all right? Does she listen to this by chance? I hope not? Real quick too.
On top of what you were saying, mo, if the algorithm, you know, it's like evil and kind of helpful, it'll catch what you watch and be like, hey, you might actually like this movie or this show.
Yeah, so there you go.
That's why I'm basically trying to say, I have no sympathy for anyone who's upset about Direct TV and Disney getting into a tiff and you can't watch your favorite ABC shows or ESPN or FX shows because there are too many ways where you don't have to be tethered to Direct TV to find anything in everything that you want.
Oh, let him fight it out.
No, no, no, I'm not rooting for Direct TV. I'm clearly on the side of Disney. I'm saying I want Direct TV to die a very slow, painful death because they overcharge me for many, many years, and I have no problem saying that they will never get another dime for me unforgivable direct TV at and T a THEATERO call like SBC back in the day, and then they merge or something like that. But yeah, they will never get any more of my money. Mark Ronner, He's not getting any more of my money.
Oh no, you gotta use the jaws of life to try my wallet open.
It's Letter with bo Kelly k by AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
The show A Different World It was a sequel to The Cosby Show, Excuse Me, a spin off to The Cosby Show in which Denise played by Lisa Bonet, went to college and that was the beginning of the show A Different World Now. As it turned out, she was only on the show for like a year, but the
show still continued on without her. But it was in the late eighties early nineties, and it was a pretty good representation of college life at this fictitious college called Hillman and but it was one of the few shows, at least sitcoms that dealt with college life.
But it was accurate.
And if you've ever been to college, if you've ever seen a college door room over the year, at least years ago, it was about struggle. You were probably with a roommate, You probably didn't have a lot of money. It was not a lot of room. There wasn't that they had. My freshman dorm room was cinderblocks. You know, you couldn't really do anything on the walls. You couldn't paint it, you couldn't really hang anything from it. You could maybe tape up some posters, but that was about it.
But part of the college experience back then, at least was not having a lot. I remember a lot of nights in which, outside of the meal plan, which was a blessing, you're kind of hungry.
You didn't have money to do things.
The really rich kids they had money, maybe they had a car, but for the most part we were struggling. We just didn't have money. Well, all that's changed, I guess now it's a thing. A wave of undergraduates, especially down south, these freshmen sophomores, they're hiring interior designers to completely make over their dorm rooms and they're spending.
Upwards of ten thousand dollars.
That's not tuition, has nothing to do with books, has nothing to do with the meal plan, that has nothing to do with just money to spend from day to day. Ten thousand dollars to decorate a dorm room, which is different from an apartment room. We're talking about a dorm that you probably share a room with someone else. It's just a room it's not like a full apartment. It's just a room, and you're spending ten thousand dollars. Let's
say you've never been in a dorm room. It's about the size of a prison cell, a little bit larger, not much larger. Okay, you have room for two beds, maybe some shelves, a makeshift closet, but it's not that big. And if you're spending ten thousand dollars on a dorm room, there's something wrong with you and your family. I question your parents, I question the wisdom of anyone who's going to do that. Now, Mark, you have far more education than I do, yeah, but not far more money than anybody ever.
But you've been in a dorm room. Oh yeah.
I only lived with somebody one semester, and we pranked each other so much that we just couldn't do it anymore. So I think I spent about a year total in dorm in the United States, and then a year in a dorm in Scotland, and again with the pranks. You know. But it seems to me like if you knew anybody who had a designer room makeover like that, you'd want nothing but to just haze them into oblivion.
Quote, we're moving away from Ikia and getting the opposite of fast furniture. This is Jinger Curtis, the founder of Urbanology Designs, a high end Dallas based interior design space that works with students preparing to go to college. These are students seventeen eighteen years old. I started college was seventeen years old. She said she can help students on a budget. Listen to this mark, She said, she can
help students. You know, if you don't have a lot of money, Let's say you only have budget for seven or eight grand pocket change, she can help you out to decorate a fricking dorm room that you don't own. Okay, whatever you do is coming down at the end of the semester of the year, because you may get a new roommate dorm mate at the semester.
Happened to me, Oh yeah, you also might not even get the same room. Hello, I just don't get it.
In other words, whatever you're spending is a wasted amount because you cannot keep any of that stuff there longer than the time that you are staying in that dorm room, which is at best is August to May.
Wouldn't that make you even more want to say, empty out your pencil sharpener in their bed sheets, or get an ice cream bar from the cafeteria and leave it in their desk drawer, or you know, any any number of things.
This is what I hate about this when I say this generation, this is not the young folks fault, generation of people in general not understanding the value of money. If you put that ten thousand dollars each year, let's say they're staying on campus each year, into some sort of trust or money market fund, they would be set by the time they came out of college. Not only would they not have any student debt, but they would have a launching pad for whatever they're trying to do.
That's like paying for a wedding each year. Each year, that's some thirty to forty thousand dollars that you're spending on decorating a room that you don't even own, that you can't even stay in more than eight months at a time.
But I've said this to you before, mo that the old quote from f. Scott Fitzgerald to Hemingway, it still holds true. The rich they're different from you and Imo. And you know Hemingway's response was, yeah, they got more money. Well, this Curtis woman.
She charges about ten thousand dollars per room, which is five grand per student. For the full service, which requires her and her team to arrive on arrive on moving day and put together the rooms from scratch.
She also charged ten thousand bucks. I want the full service.
Well, that doesn't include the one hundred dollars charge for the initial consultation. There are different design packages, but her flat room prices range from five hundred and forty nine dollars to eighteen forty nine.
That fee includes concepts.
Three D renderings, custom floor plans, and a shopping list.
Not one of those little models with the styrofoam reproductions of the buildings.
And maybe maybe for that money, I should get that little trees. What amazes me more than anything is people are paying for this. This is a thriving business, mostly at the southern schools like University Ole Miss and other schools down south. This is a big thing there. Yeah, thank goodness, I couldn't afford that. No, let me just skim some money off of my Ramen budget for some
of that. There were there were a number of nights where yes, I was happy to get Ramen happened if I had ten thousand dollars just to decorate my dorm room. Oh my gosh, it's late with Mo Kelly ca IF. I am six forty one live everywhere in the iHeartRadio.
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