What's going on.
I'm Rich Demiro and this is rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. Oh wow, that rhymes. I never realized that that's triple eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology. There is no such thing as a stupid tech question or a question that's too small. No job too big, no job too small. Here on the rich on Tech Show. Email is also open. Just go to Richontech dot tv hit contact. You can send your message straight to my inbox. I will read some of the on the show, and of course you can also put your feedback in for the feedback segment at the end. Now, I know there's gonna be a
lot of good information in this week's show. You're gonna be tempted to write it all down, but you don't have to. All you have to do to see what I talk about in real time is go to the rich on Tech wiki that is rich on Tech dot tv slash wiki wiki. Look for the latest show number, and that is where you'll find everything I talk about today in real time. We've got some great guests this week. Julie Ramhold, consumer analysts with deal news dot com, is
going to talk Black Friday strategies for shopping. Then we've got Edgar Dwarski, founder of Consumer World. He's gonna share top tips to get a deal on Black Friday. And Vitally Pacharski of Slick Deals is gonna highlight some of the top deals out there for the holiday shopping season.
You see the theme in this week show.
Yes, it is holiday shopping season in full swing, and I want to make sure that you get the best deals and don't.
Get ripped off.
So this week, like many folks that are a little bit early, I set up my holiday lights and I just wanted to tell you a funny little story about that. So I set up my holiday lights and I just did the inside because this is a big project. You know, I didn't even do the outside yet, but I did the inside. You know, you lug all the boxes in from the garage, you go through what you have number one.
You think you're going to remember the changes that you made from the year before, like did I get new lights? Did I get this? How did I put that away? You forget everything. As soon as you put that stuff away in the garage. You do not remember a thing. You're like, oh, next year, I'll remember that I bought these new lights, or I put these lights on the tree, or I put these lights outside. Now you forget everything.
So from now on, number one, I'm keeping a holiday lights journal, and I'm going to write in that journal, like here's the stuff I bought this year, Here's what I changed this year, Here's what I did. But that's besides the point. What I wanted to tell you is that I set up, of course, everything on the smart
home system. So I plugged all the lights into smart plugs, and then I set up with Google a command so I can just say H Google H stands for hey, turn on the Christmas lights, and boom, all the lights in the house turn on. And I had them set up two ways to go off. I had it set up to go off after twenty minutes of no motion. And that actually turn out to be kind of a problem because it turns out I don't walk through my
kitchen where the motion detector is every twenty minutes. And so I was sitting there scratching my head because the lights would go off in the house. I'm like, did you just turn those off? Did you turn them off? Who turned off the Christmas lights? And I remembered that I had them set on this motion sensor, so I disabled that. But I did come up with the command
of turn off the plugs. H Google, turn off the smart plugs, and that would just turn off all the smart plugs in the house, which the only ones we're using are the ones with the Christmas lights. Well, anyway, I told my wife this and I guess she forgot and so I come home from work and I say, you know, turn on the Christmas lights whatever, And they're not working. Nothing's coming on, and I'm like, what is
going on here? And I'm getting angrier and angrier because I'm like, this is why technology, this is why it's so tough for people, because a simple thing just doesn't work. I set this up yesterday and none of it works. Well, it turns out after much much anger on my part, and I wasn't really angry. I was just like this is so like, this is what I need to talk about on the show, Like you set this stuff up and it really doesn't work, Like people need to know
that they're not alone in this stuff. And so I get a text from my wife and I forget how this all went. But long story short, she's like, oh, by the way, I forgot what the command was last night to turn off the lights, so I just unplugged them all.
What.
I go around to all of the holiday lights and I see all the plugs pulled out of the wall because she couldn't remember what the command was to turn them off. And I am I at this point, I'm actually my anger went to just laughing out loud because I said, this is this is hilarious. This is the reality of tech in our world. Yes, thank you Bobo. Oh so, anyway, I got a good laugh out of that.
I thought that was just so funny because here it is all the planning in the world, all of the technology in the world, and still my wife just goes ahead and unplugs them, and you know, I'm sitting there trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Oh, I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, just know the commands for your smart stuff. I thought this was interesting.
This week, I got an email from AMC. I'm part of that Stubbs thing, and they said, oh, here, thanks for being a member, and here's how many movies you've gone too. I pay like twenty five dollars a month to see as many movies as I want. I thought it was a good idea, and I looked down the list and it's like, you've been a member since February and you've seen nine movies. So I did the math in my head. Okay, February to now whatever it is, ten months, I don't know. Times twenty five dollars a month,
two hundred and fifty dollars divided by nine movies. I was paying like double the I was paying more for movies than a movie ticket.
And so I realized something.
This same exact thing happened to me a couple of years ago when I got this same exact email for my gym membership and it was like, hey, Rich, thanks for being.
A member of the gym. Here's how many times you went this year.
And it was like, I did the math, and I was like, wait a second, I just paid like this much per gym session.
Uh huh, and I canceled that day.
Now the stubs I haven't canceled yet because I'm still like, I'm like, Okay, we're getting into the holiday season.
I'll have some time off, maybe I'll see like two movies a week. Whatever.
But it made me realize that if you run any sort of service where people are paying a subscription to you, do not send them an email with how many times they've gotten a use out of that subscription, because no matter what, someone's gonna do the math and they're going to realize, hold on, this is not a very good deal.
Like can you imagine if NETFLI send you an email that said, hey, here's how much you pay, and here's how much hours you've watched, and you do that math, You're like, wait, I'm paying like twenty dollars an hour.
Now.
Netflix, I think is a bad example because most people are getting their value. But let's say like one of these other services, maybe it's like a music streaming service, maybe it's like one of the lesser streaming services. People don't want to know this information. Don't give us the information because then we'll keep paying. So that's a little tip for your companies out there that want to get that subscription revenue. Don't give us the numbers. We don't
want to know them. Yesterday at work, we had this friends giving which was really fun. I was kind of dreading it just a little bit because you know, when you get a whole bunch of TV people in a room, it could be interesting. You know, TV people have a lot of big personality. So I'm sitting there like, Oh, what's this going to be?
Like?
Is there going to be booze? The answer to that was really no.
So you know, we were literally at a brightly lit bar in Hollywood with no booze and a bunch of us are just standing around for like forty minutes, and it actually turned out to be really fun.
We had a great time.
I'm all the KTLA folks that I work with, we just had a great time. Even though there was no booze flowing. We had such a good time, and so it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, and we didn't want it to end. In fact, we had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at this restaurant called Gwen in Hollywood.
Curtis Stone is a big celebrity chef. He hosted us.
But anyway, the reason I tell you this is because it was a given that everyone around the dinner table was taking pictures on their iPhone and they're like, oh, let me just air drop you those. And I will talk about how Apple is sort of bridging the gap between
iPhone and Android in the next segment. But it's just it's still sad to me that people just use these proprietary eponyms like let me just air drop you, like everyone in the world has air drop and has that make someone feel that has a Samsung or a Pixel?
Not very good.
So again, number one, don't assume people have it, especially as the holidays come up. I know you're going to be exchanging pictures with folks, so let me just go over the three ways to share pictures. It's not just air rap, so you can say, let me send you those pictures.
What do you have? Do you have an Android? Do you have a Samsung? Do you have a Pixel?
So on iPhone, obviously it's air drop and you'd be surprised how many people don't know how to activate this. You swipe from the upper right hand corner that will bring up control panel. Then you tap, just tap like a press and hold on like the Bluetooth icon, that will bring up a menu that says air drop. You press and hold on that and it says everyone for ten minutes, and that will enable you to share stuff
with everyone that has an iPhone for the next ten minutes. Now, if you're on Google, they have something on Android for all Android phones called Nearby Share, and this is really handy. So if you go into Settings Google Nearby Share, you can turn it on, set it up, name your phone, all that good stuff. But then when you want to share something, just use the share menu and look for nearby Share and that will share it with other Android users and they will be able to accept that as well.
They might have to toggle this on in their quick settings, but it's very simple and it's basically Android's version of air Drop.
Now, if you're on.
Samsung, they have a really cool feature that is called quick Share, and this is a feature that actually works with both iPhones and other Androids. And so you go into the gallery okay, and you press share and you'll see something called quick Share and you can share with other Samsung devices. But what's neat about this is that
there is a little icon with a QR code. You can hit that and it will generate a QR code that the other phone, no matter what phone they have, can scan, and that QR code will easily have your photos and videos that you want to share in that link and so anyone can download those.
That is a very simple way to share stuff.
I know people get a bad rap for having an iPhone, Android, iPhone, Samsung, Samsung whatever.
So that is three super simple ways.
To share your photos and videos this holiday season that does not require airdrop or iPhone to iPhone.
All right, coming up, what the heck happened to Open AI?
We'll talk about that plus your calls at Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can follow me on social media. I'm at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook and threads.
And if you want to link to something I mentioned on the show, you can go to richon Tech dot tv slash wiki. Let's kick things off this hour with Morris in studio City Morris, you're on with Rich Yeah, good morning.
I have a situation here. I have a one target drive.
CD burner and uh, I'm burning making copies of CDs and they're skipping. They're skipping on the from the drive mechanism. Is it I'm burningham too fast? Should I slow the speed down? I don't know what to do about it?
What? What kind of CDs? Are these? Just standard like audio scenes.
Standard the music CDs and but the CD burner I have also burns Blue Ay disc and DVD also okay, but I'm not burning Blue Ay Disc or DVD right now, just standard CDs and make them duplicates. But they're skippy, okay?
And are they skipping when you play them?
Yeah?
Okay, so when you play them they skip? Okay.
So it's been a while since I have since I have duplicated a CD. I mean, I'm talking it's got to be ten years at this point, maybe eight nine, ten years. But I think a couple of things could be playing could be at play here. So number one, the CDs themselves could be damaged, so they could be scratched. I mean, CDs have been out for a while, so these CDs. Your source CDs could be scratched, they could have dust, they could have dirt on them, they could
just be deteriorated because they're kind of old. So maybe that's that's one problem. I think the second side of this is maybe the software and or the hardware. So maybe, like you said, you can try doing a slower duplication because I know back in the day these DVD drives and they used to have like one x two x, four x eight x, So it might be that your computer can't handle the higher speed duplication, so maybe try lowering down.
I would assume you've tried that.
The other part is really the software, so make sure all of your software is up to date and make sure that you are running the latest software for no matter what you're using for both the drive, the drivers for that, and also the duplication software. And just clean the CD so you know, use like maybe a microfiber cloth or something to gently wipe the CD before you do it. If it's happening with every CD that you try,
I would assume it's a hardware or software issue. If it's happening with just some of the CDs that you're dupating, that I think it would be a dirt issue or an issue with the lens on the drive or something like that. But that's what I would do. That's what I would try see if that helps. And you know, it's hey, you know what, some people are still using CDs. I guess it's been a while for me, but I
remember how simple they were. It's like you popped one in, it played the ten songs that were on there, and you moved on to the next thing. And I played the heck out of some of my CDs back in the day. I mean I really did. It was like it was like, man, those things. Thankfully they didn't wear out because I would have worn them out. Thanks for the call, Wars appreciate it. So this is huge, huge, huge news.
In the world. Apple.
Let's file this under can I say hell Hell freezes over? Because it has. Apple has announced our CS support for the iPhone coming in twenty twenty four. This means that the big vide between iPhones and Android when it comes to text messaging has been bridged. I can't believe that this is happening. It is such a surprise that Apple made this announcement. So what's gonna happen. Apple is basically bringing the standard which is called RCS Rich Communication Services
to the iPhone. This is a standard that has been on Android phones for a while. It brings I message type messaging between the iPhone and Android.
What does that mean?
Yes, the bubbles are still gonna be green when someone texts from an Android to the iPhone, but they can now send full resolution pictures, full resolution videos, and you'll be able to see when they're typing. You'll be able to see when they've read something if you want. You'll be able to have just all the features that you would expect from modern messaging things that we have now turned to messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp that will
now be cross platform. Now, I message is not going away. Apple still says I message is the best and most secure way to message between iPhones and that's still going to be the default. That's also end to end encrypted. So far, it does not look like the RCS messages. The text messaging between these two you know, Android iPhone is going to be end to end encrypted, but it will be encrypted to a certain level, so.
It's not going to be the most secure messaging.
But I think for everyday message messages, it'll still be pretty good.
So why did they do this?
Well, I think there's a lot of pressure on Apple right now because people are noticing that they are very proprietary with their systems, especially over in Europe, and Europe's been passing a lot of regulations. That's why we got USBC, That's why we may see a more open app store over there. But I think Apple is seeing what's happening and they're saying, you know what, We're kind of sick and tired of being the odd man out at this point.
Let's just give the folks what they want, and what we want are more open systems and more cross platform systems. So this whole thing of if you have an Android and you're sort of lesser than that will no longer be the case because your messages will go through like they should, your pictures will look nice, your videos will look nice. Thank you Apple for doing this, finally getting on board with what the rest of the with the
providers are doing. All right, Coming up, Julie Ramhold, consumer analyst with Deal News, gonna join us to talk Black Friday strategies. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven.
Four to two four one zero one.
I see you're already taking advantage of the website messages at richontech dot tv, so keep them coming. I'll get to a couple of those in a second, but let's bring on my guests. Julie Ramhold, consumer analyst with dealnews dot com. Julie, thanks for joining me me So deal news is one of my first stops each day. I check it each and every day. It's a great website for finding deals. Can you tell me a little bit about it? What you guys do there?
Sure?
So, we're kind of like a shopping comparison site, and basically we have a team full of live curators that go out online every day and sign the best deals so that we can list them on the site, and we provide a little extra context about why these deals are worth shopping. So we'll tell you that something is twenty percent off, or maybe that something's full price, but it's been out of stock all over the place, so now you can actually get whatever that item may be.
Yeah, that is my favorite part about the website. Is that each and every post has a little bit of perspective with it. So, for instance, you've got this Black Friday headphone deals at best Buy, and it says we've pictured the Bows Quiet Comfort forty five bluetooth noise canceling headphones for one ninety nine, which is one hundred and thirty dollars off, and so or it'll I'll tell you like, hey, this is ten dollars less than we've ever seen this product.
Things like that exactly, And that's really helpful, especially this time of year when you're trying to decide if the deals are worth shopping or.
If you can safely wait until later.
So I guess that's my number one question. I've already started sort of making my list and checking it twice, but I mean, it's coming up. So how do you think we come up with our strategy for Black Friday shopping lists?
So Black Friday has kind of become this elongated season now, so I feel like if you haven't started making a list yet, you might be a little overwhelmed, just because some stores have already started their sales, some have been rolling out early Black Friday deals, so ultimately the information's kind of out there and your approach now maybe a little bit more reactive rather than proactive, but it's not
too late by any means. It's just now's a good time to start browsing the ads and checking out your favorite retailers to see what kinds of deals are available. And then also that'll give you a heads up on what's coming later in the week as well.
So do you guys post the actual ads or do you just post like the best parts of the ads?
We go through all the ads and basically pull the offers that jump out at us as being the best that they're offering, and so we'll post those to like our store guides as well as the general site too. So we don't list the ads in their entirety, but that's probably a good thing because some of them get really really long and can be kind of convoluted. So we pull all the best parts out of the ads and put them up so that our users can have an easier time of tracking it.
And I love how you list You've right now, You've got three hundred and ninety five total offers. Biggest discount ninety two percent off, average savings two hundred and fifty three dollars and fifty three cents coupon codes fifty three, and you can also filter out kind of the three hundred and ninety five Black Friday offers that you've identified.
Absolutely.
Yeah, we've definitely made a lot of strides in the last five years or so to make the site even more user friendly so that you can get as broad or as granular with your searches and your deal alerts that you want and spend as much time with us as you'd like to.
It's so interesting to me that Black Friday used to only mean waiting in line at the store in store, and now it is kind of both. It's online and in store. Have we seen that shift in recent years?
It is.
It's definitely shifted more online in recent years because of the pandemic. I think we were already sort of seeing things like in store doorbusters disappear.
I think those videos from uh Walmart, We're not going to see those this year because those are always so fun.
We definitely have not seen any stories about tramplings in the last few years, at least.
That I can recall.
But it's true like retailers have kind of already moved away from that to some degree, and the pandemic really just accelerated that whole situation.
So you basically can.
Find doorbusters online now, and you have a bunch of major retailers that are closing for Thanksgiving Day, so the pressure to do at least your initial shopping in store has kind of disappeared.
So you deal with this stuff on a daily basis. What do we need to know in year twenty twenty three for Black Friday?
So first of all, I would say check now, because some major retailers have already started their sales. Amazon started theirs yesterday, Best Buys started theirs yesterday.
Targets is due.
To start tomorrow, Walmart's will start on the twenty second, So if you haven't started looking at the big eaes yet, it's a good time to do so, just to get an idea of what's coming. But also know that most stores are probably gonna be closed on Thanksgiving Day, and so that doesn't mean you have to wait until Black
Friday to do your shopping. The sales will start online if they haven't started already, so be sure to carve out some time in between carving the Turkey to take a look at what's online and take advantage of any early deals online that you can so that you can kind of avoid the chaos that can.
Come with Black Friday shopping.
Where are we seeing the biggest discounts? Is it across the board? Is it on electronics? Is it on TVs?
I heard laptops are going to be pretty hot this year with the discounts.
Laptops are definitely seeing good deals. I will say one thing that really stood out to me about TVs this year is it's become apparent how much more affordable they are. So a few years ago, I know that we were all really excited to see like a seventy five inch name brand TV for six hundred dollars or so, and that's kind of become a mainstay thing for Black Friday
since then. But it's not six hundred dollars anymore. It's, you know, five hundred eighty dollars, five hundred and fifty dollars, depending on where you're shopping and what brand you're looking at. So in general, TVs have gotten so affordable that you should be able to find something on Black Friday that fits any budget. But if you don't, you can also shop at other times of year. So check back again in January if you don't see a TV that fits
all of the boxes that you want. But the truth is that there's so many on sale, and it's so many different price points. I would be surprised if you can't find something to fit your budget.
What about getting taken because this is an easy time to see a deal that's too good to be true. You do a search on Google, it comes up with the price, it's some retailer you've never heard of. You end up pressing by and next thing you know, it's not what you expected or I don't know.
Does that happen these days? And how do you avoid that it does?
And I generally say that it's best to kind of make a list of stores that you know you want a shop for Black Friday, or the ones that you're comfortable with visiting if you need to. So maybe you want to do all of your shopping at Target, but they sell out of an iPad or something. Rather than rely on this potentially shady business online that you've never heard of, be ready to go to Walmart and best Buy and even check warehouse clubs if you're a member
of like Costco or Sam's Club or BJ's Wholesale. Just because they may not officially price match, but a lot of retailers essentially will charge the same prices for the really popular items this time of year.
So if it does sell out at one.
Place, you absolutely should be able to find it at another reputable retailer without having to go online and do some heavy hunting.
I've heard that a lot of these retailers, if it says Black Friday deal, they won't price match. So can you touch upon the return, exchange and price match policies we should know about.
Yeah, So in general, I say that if you're shopping for Black Friday, it's a safe bet to just assume that there will be no official price matching. Like I said before, that doesn't mean you won't be able to find the same prices elsewhere. But if you see something at Target and Walmart is closer, and you try to get Walmart to price match for Black Friday.
That's not going to happen.
So instead of taking that step, what I encourage people to do is look at what holiday price guarantees some retailers are putting into place. So, for instance, Target has its holiday price guarantee that started on October twenty second, and essentially anything you buy at Target.
Okay, I shouldn't say anything.
Most things you buy at Target from October twenty second through December twenty fourth will fall under this guarantee. So if you bought them at Target and then they drop in price before December twenty fourth, you should be able
to get a price adjustment. There's going to be some exclusions, of course, but for the most part, you should be able to safely pick up these items now, even if they have Black Friday Deal on them or whatever, and know that you're getting a good price, especially because I don't think Target wants its associates to be doing a lot of price adjustments later on.
So the author kind of good that if you see.
Something labeled a Black Friday Deal at Target, that's probably the lowest price on that item you're going to see this season.
All right, I've got about thirty seconds left. Should this be fun? Is this a fun time of year or is it super stressful for the shopping I think it.
Should be fun.
I say to you, all your shopping online, and if you want your item sooner, opt for in store pickup, and then that makes the whole thing significantly less stressful in my book.
All Right, Julie Ramhold, consumer analyst with dealnews dot com. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really like the website. Any any feature on the website people should look for first, just click that big banner that says Black Friday.
Huh, I would.
Say, click that big banner and check out all the Black Friday deals.
All right, thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, all right.
More of your calls at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is Rich d'miro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight.
Seven four to two four one zero one website rich on Tech dot TV. I got a message from Jen She said, what the heck? Whose side are you on, Rich, The wealthy companies, not the people who are forced to pay subscriptions. Of course, we should know how much per item view we're paying, and then we can make an informed choice or continue or not.
Very strange. Yeah, I was kind of joking.
I mean, Louck companies could do whatever they want, but I just thought it's funny. I think it's funny when they send something that I think the reality is they're trying to show you the value you're getting out of your subscription, and in some cases like mine, you realize just how bad of a value it is. So it's kind of tongue in cheek. Jen, thank you for listening, Thanks for the feedback.
I appreciate it.
But you know, sometimes I kind of you know, you have to have a lighthearted sense of humor. Here, Bob from Oral Valley, Arizona, you're on with Rich.
Hi.
Rich, I have a question the Higher App. I've got everything enabled, everything blocking. Every few weeks, I get one call after the other, maybe twenty or thirty calls within a minute from a Chevrolet dealer in California. So I don't want to mention them because they might legitimate. Well they can't leave a message, but it's annoying. It's just I can see all the numbers of the calls on the Higher App. So is there any way to even
block those or just let them come through? And what's the reason for that same number coming through every few weeks twenty or thirty calls at a time.
Well, do you have a car that they're trying to repossess.
Well, it's funny, you know. It's funny because the day after I get those messages, I get a message saying, hey, it's not my name. They say, hey, Johnny, are you ready for a car alone? So I just send that to I think it's seven seven two six When that's reported as a spam.
Yeah, I mean I think that. I think that it could be. So it's the same number every time that's calling you, same.
Number as the Chevrolet dealer in California, and I checked it. Although that number for this Chevrolet DIY it'll looks different than this one. It has their name. So I don't know how they got my number and why they just send twenty sometimes it's you know, thirty calls at a time, just an a loop.
Wow, that's that's weird. I mean, I don't think the dealership would be calling like that unless.
It is I think so, unless it is a case.
Of mistake and identity and they are trying to reclaim a car or something, and that could be you know, they could just have your number popped in for someone that they're trying to reach.
I have gotten those calls in the past. Are you on an iPhone or Android iPhone?
Okay, So I think even though you're using this high app, if it's coming from the same number every time, I would just recommend using iPhones built in ability to block a number. And so what I would do is go into your recence, tap the little I that is next to the phone number, and then scroll all the way down and it says block this caller. And once you block that caller, they will not be able to I believe they It won't even ring your phone once it's blocked.
It's just not going to come through. So again, go into your dialer app, tap the recens find this phone number, tap the I next to it, and then tap block this caller, and that should do it. There are similar ways of doing that on both the Samsung devices and the Pixel devices. So again it's the difference between using Hya, which you're using a third party call screening app, and using the built in kind of dialer on the phone to just take care of that call before it even
reaches anything. So that's what I would do, and I think that should take care of it. Otherwise on the High app when and just in general with these spam calls. My recommendation is number one, generally, don't pick them up. So you don't want to pick them up, because when you pick them up sometimes it will register your number as a live number, so they just dial a whole bunch of numbers and if they see that someone picks up that number, they're like, oh, we got a good one,
and they may try to call that number again. So that's generally what I would try to do is avoid picking up these spam calls at any rate. But for you, I think getting this number over and over and over, just go ahead and use your phone dialer to block that message. Let's go to Jim in Hysperia, California. Jim, you're on with Rich.
I ain't Rich.
How are you doing?
I am doing great, good good.
I have a question.
I ask some speakers from Nests Well that's actually Google. You know, they're called the Nest Audio Speakers.
You know.
I bought them from the Google Store.
Yeah.
It's like a it's like two speakers basically, they're like different colors.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I have a Wi Fi Spectrum and I have a six E. It's one of the updated routers, and it's a it's called the six E router.
That's the slatest.
Yeah, so every time that I connect the speaker, it goes all the way through it and it catches it and it connects.
But then.
That it does something about an ap isolation where it has to be enabled or disabled called and I've called the spectrum and they've they've said, you know.
Uh, you know, they can't help.
You can't do that or something.
So on your router.
So ap isolation is basically a way to ensure that the items on your network are sort of isolated, almost like sandbox from other items, so that way they can't ruin things on your network. They can only access certain resources. So I think what's happening is it sounds like if it's giving you that message, either a you're connecting to a guest network on your router, which I don't think you would be doing, but if you are, that could be the number one thing is switched to the standard network,
not the guest network. But if you're on the regular network and you're still getting this error message, I would go into your router settings and see if you can turn off the AP isolation. And there could be different names for this. It could be wireless isolation, client isolation, any of those settings. Just look for that and toggle that off. So the way to find your settings for any router, they're typically printed on the bottom, and so you flip your router over and that's the box that
the cable company gives you. Printed on the bottom of that is usually an address. It usually starts with like so it's like one nine eight one six eight something like that. You type that into your web browser. That will bring you to the settings on your router. And usually there is a log in username and a password that is from the factory printed on the bottom of your router. So once you log in there, you can look for your settings and look for that AP isolation.
It may take a little bit for you to find it. You have to go through all the Wi Fi settings and be careful because you don't want to change a lot of stuff because these things come from the factory. If you don't know what you're doing, it could be
detrimental to your wireless setup. Now, if you mess something up and it's totally not working, there's usually a little push button on the bottom of your router that you can press and hold for like twenty or thirty seconds and it will put everything back to normal factory settings. So if worst comes to worse you mess something up,
you can do that. But I would look into your settings and see if you can do that, and once you turn off this ap isolation, then hopefully these speakers can be able to get onto your network properly and talk to each other. The other thing I would do is just make sure the software on these speakers is up to date because these have been around for a while. But the problem is you may not be able to update them unless you get them on the network, so it could be a game of chicken and egg here.
So good question, Jim, Thanks for the call today. Triple A rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can find what I talk about on the website rich on tech dot tv. If you want to see what I talk about in real time, go to rich on tech dot tv slash wiki wiki. All
the show notes are updated in real time. So if I mentioned something and there's a link that you want to get, you can get it right from there.
The show was available as a podcast as well.
Just go to rich on tech dot tv to subscribe, or just search rich on tech in your favorite podcast app. Of course, you can always listen to it right here and live, which is always the best way and the most fun. If you're listening to the podcast, by the way, do me a favor, rate and review it. That way more people will discover it, and that way we can be around here longer. So it's always a nice thing
when people do that. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one big, big, big surprise change at open ai. This is wild. Now we know that ai is changing things day by day, but little do we know behind the scenes of open ai there were some issues. Sam Altman, CEO of open Ai, is gone. They booted him out
the board of directors. Why they said, based on a review process they found he was not consistently candid in his communit locations with the board, which hindered their ability to fulfill their responsibilities. What does that mean? What's that crypticness? We don't know.
All we know is that the board did not like what this guy was doing.
This is the guy who invented chat GPT, the thing that has single handedly changed the world in the last year, and now he has moved on. Now he did tweet x whatever you want to talk about and he said, look, something's next.
But this was not of his own doing.
And it's very odd for a company that is yeah, they've been around for a bit, but just with their public product of chat GBT, that's only been around for about eleven months now or I guess almost a year. And by the way, they just did their developer day last week, which means this guy was on stage talking about how great this company is and all the great things that are coming.
So he did not see this coming.
He should have asked chat GBT, what's my future because he would have found out. Maybe maybe chat GBT knew before he did.
Uh.
So we don't know what's gonna happen.
We don't know what this means for the quality or future of chat GBT, or if they had something like you know this, Uh, maybe they had like some humanoid that they were building that he was secretly hiding in like a you know, like one of those like alien tanks, Like maybe he had one of those in the office and they found it and they're just like, Okay, you gotta go, dude, this is getting weird. Chat GBT is getting too human. Anyway, I joke that is a joke, Jen, don't email me.
Just kidding.
Anyway, So we'll see what happens with chat GBT. But this was a big, big surprise. And I usually don't talk about, you know, employee changes on this show because that's not really consumer focused. But it's just very odd and it is definitely the story that is getting the most discussion I think I've ever seen on a tech story in recent years, because it is just wild for this guy to start such a transformative product and be booted from his own company.
Let's go to Jack in Anaheim. Jack, you're on with Rich.
Hi.
Rich, I have a primary question, but then when you talked about chat g TP, I have a second follow up question. My first question is very simple. I was looking at some property on Zillo and the picture comes up in it's it's blurred or digitally sneered out, and I noticed when I went to Google the same thing. Is there that the house, the front of the house or the front of the property is is.
Yeah, it's blurred. Yep.
How would I do that for my property? That properties that I own?
Yeah, you can do this pretty easily. I actually did this for Zillo a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't believe how fast they did it. So when I bought my house, all the pictures were on there, and even though I edited. I claimed my house and I edited and I said take these pictures off, they still just remain there like they just every time I said edit and remove photos, they still were there. And I'm not talking about the exterior. I'm talking about the interior.
I was like, you know, you could just see in detail every single room of my home. And so I was like, eh, I don't really need that, Like why do I want people to take a tour of my house?
Right?
And so I emailed Zillo and I just sent them my link to you know, the house, and they literally, within I think it was like an hour, they said, all right, your pictures are gone.
Now.
I didn't blur the outside. I didn't go that far. But you can do that. So on Zillo, you have to claim your house. If you've done that, you go through that process of just going to the website sign in claim your house and I don't know what it's been a long time since I claimed it, but basically you put in your address and somehow you get to be the owner. I think they check like the property, like some little bit of info, and you confirm it with like a couple of questions, then it becomes yours.
So that's the first thing you have to do.
If you haven't done that, you do that, and then you can edit the facts from the owner's view. And there's a box that says hide photos displayed on your home's Zillo page and you can save those changes and those photos will be blurred out and your your photo of your exterior of your house will be blurred out. So that's the number one way to do it.
But I don't want to delete the other photos of the injurior because I've done so much so I want to be able to compare that when if I sell. Well, I like those photos, but I just want to blur out the front.
Well, there are different there's you can there's options for the different photos, so you would just blur the photos from the outside, so you're doing the opsode what I did. Now on Google you can do the same thing on Google Maps. And on Google Maps you can. I'm looking at the directions here, let's see, so you've got to go. I don't have the actual directions on how to do it, but there is a way to do it.
Yeah, you did great. That's all I need is I need a a sign pointing me the right direction. You've done that answer quick question.
But hold on.
Here's here's here's the main thing I want other people to know about. About the whole Google Maps and blurring out your house. You can never get it back once it's blow or it does.
Not come back. So okay, you just need to know that.
And the way you do it is actually you go to street View, you go to your house and there's report a problem, and then you can, you know, go through the steps and you can say my house request blurring. I didn't go that far because you know, I just I once I got to think about that, because once you do it, it's it's gone. And I have been on street View and I've seen some of that stuff. So I'll put those links on the show notes. But what's the second question.
You just were talking about artificial intelligence, and I went on about two weeks ago to chat GPT or whatever it is, and I needed to ask you. They want so much information for me to upload it or access it, and I there was also actually like pictures of you know, black background with white letters, okay, like copy and paste to get it to work, okay, And it just seemed like to INVASI to me, is that How is that how I would sign up to use it?
I don't think so, because I signed up in one click. So I think you're on either a third party site that is trying to hijack the chat GBT name.
But the only.
Website to access chat GBT, and it's free, by the way, is chat dot OpenAI dot com. So Jack, if you weren't going to that website, I would go to that website. I signed up. I rarely do this, but I did sign up. I signed in using my Google account, so I just signed in with Google. It gives you the option of signing in with a couple of different ways, but I just did that. Now, I did say, let me see if I see sign up. Okay, Yeah, it's
just you know, ask you for email address. I do think you have to confirm your phone number though, for sure, because you know, they want to keep this from being abused, so you know. But you can also use Google, Microsoft or Apple to log in as well. I don't typically recommend that, but for trusted websites like an open ai, I think that's fine. But I would check out chat dot OpenAI dot com. That is the official website. They also have an app for the iPhone and for Android.
But keep in mind there are a lot of what I call kling on apps. These are third party apps that are using the Chat GBT name, and you just have to be careful. And it gets a little confusing
because here's the thing. Many products use GPT for or GPT that is a product from CHATGBT, and companies have the option of using chatgpt's technology to build their own AI products, and so it gets very confusing because yes, a product like Notion or a product like Everno or any app that you download nowadays, it says, hey we have AI and it's usually a GPT and usually on the back end it is being powered by OpenAI's GPT technology. But the official CHATGPT lives at chat dot OpenAI dot com.
That is the website you want to go to and I actually have been using chat GBT more. I was using Claude by Anthropic, but with this latest I pay for the twenty dollars a month for chat gbt the premium, and it is just quite incredible what it can do. If you want to see an example, I actually posted a picture today on my Instagram uh and my stories at rich on Tech, and I ask people if they're watching the USC or UCLA game, and the picture I have on there is actually AI generated. It is just
wild what this thing can do. All right, great questions, Jack, Thanks so much for the call today at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This hour, we've got Edgar Dwarski, founder of Consumer World, coming up, plus more of your questions right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to the founder of Consumer World, one of the websites that I visit every day, Edgar Dwarski. He's going to share top tips on how to get a deal on Black Friday. Plus, I'm going to tell you how to set up emergency services on your smartphone. Very very important. Let's go to Ken in Aurora, Colorado. Ken, you're on with rich All.
Hi, thanks for taking my call. Well, I'm just calling on behalf of a friend of mine. Her relative is planning to buy her a brand new phone smartphone and then put that phone on the relative phone service company, and then the relative would then be paying that.
Phone bill for her nice relative?
Yeah, what's that?
Nice relative?
Yeah really, I've been I was a petted about that myself. However, my friend has a fairly new Moto Gen Android smartphone, and that of course has her photos and her phone
list and all the apps that she enjoys. And so here's my question of instead of that relative buying a brand new phone and shipping it to it, would it be doable for my friends to ask her relative to use the I M E I numbers from the Moto g at the phone store to switch my my friend's phone service over to the relative's phone service by computer at the phone store without having without having the relative buy a brand new phone. Is that doable?
Oh? You lost me? I'm confused.
Okay, So so the okay, you've got you've got the Moto G phone.
Is that already? Is that the old phone or the new phone?
That's the old.
Phone okay, once she had that at this moment.
Okay, she's got that phone, and then she's she's going to get a new phone.
Yeah, her, her, her, the relative wants to buy her a new phone.
Okay. And the relative lives somewhere.
Else correct, yeah, her relative of Oh.
And the relative is going to pay for the phone, and she's going to pay for the service.
Correct.
Yeah, So the relative should buy the phone where she lives, buy the phone, go into her carrier, activate the phone, and then ship it to the person that's going to use it.
Okay, Yes, that's correct. That that that is the plan at the moment. Okay, but what but what I'm asking And to save this relative some money? Yeah, and to make it more straightforward for my friend to hang on to her her photos and her apps and the phone that that are on the old phone. Uh can uh?
And my friend's relative takes the I N E I numbers from the Moto G to the phone store where she was planning on buying the new phone, and then just the employee there using those I am I numbers just uh kind of by remote controls with the phone service from the old phone.
I'm sorry, Yeah, it's possible. It's possible.
I'm a little confused, but it's one hundred percent possible that you can you can activate a phone using just the Imei numbers. That's that's pretty much how all of the carriers do it nowadays. But what's confusing is your friend has to procure the new phone. How's she getting the new phone?
Okay, Well, the plan was, like you said a few months ago, the rug is going to go and buy the phone and put that phone on the relatives phone service and then then ship it to my friend. Yeah, well and but uh uh but that but there's nothing in that plan about saving my friend's photos.
Well it's a friend, okay. So when that's on on the Moto G, when.
The friend gets the phone, she transfers the stuff from the Moto G to the new phone. She's going to have both phones, so it'll be easy to transfer the stuff over. So it's whether the phone is activated or not doesn't really matter. I mean, it's going to be activated when she gets it. Now, if you're asking me if the if the relative, if the person that's getting this phone can go out and buy it themselves and then activate it like remotely on the other person's account,
that could also be an option. And it's not that nothing. The carriers don't require a physical phone in their hand to activate it. If it's if it's being activated without a SIM card, usually it's it's being activated nowadays with an eSIM So you can do that online.
You can do that on the phone.
In fact, they don't want you to come into the store anymore because guess what that costs them money because they got to use one of their employees, so they would they would rather do this online. And yes, it can all be done online. But the question is, because this phone is being used by a third party that is not the person. Your your friend is not going to be able to active this phone on their own
because she's not the account owner. So it may come into play where you have to put your the person who's getting this phone has to put the other person on the phone third party, and they have to get permission and be on the line to activate this phone because otherwise, you know, and I could just say, oh, I know your account number, and I can activate a bunch of lines.
But that's that's how I would do it.
I mean, it sounds a little complicated, but the bottom line is that your friend has this Moto G phone unless they're trading it in, which you didn't say that. Unless they're trading it in, she's still going to have that phone when the new phone arrives to her, whether your friend is sending her that phone, whether she's going out to Best Buy and purchasing that phone. But usually if you purchase a store like that, they want to
activate it in the store. So your friend who is getting the phone or giving them the phone needs to buy this phone online from like an Amazon or an Apple dot com and just ship it directly to this person. And that's what I would do. When the person gets the phone, they can call their friend and you know, activate it with them on the line, call the you know, do a three way call whatever, and activate it through
the cell phone company on that. But no, the phone does not necessarily need to be in the physical presence of the store to activate. Many of these activations could be done online unless the phone doesn't support an eSIM and then it would be a little bit of a problem. So Ken, thanks so much for the call. Hope they get that sorted out. But it sounds pretty straightforward. I mean, it's obviously it's easier to be in person, but these
things can be done. Kids are at college all the time they get phones activated by their parents that are in different states that are still footing the bill. Because that's the best part about being in college. Your parents probably still pay for your stuff. Edgar Dwarski, founder of Consumer World, joining me next right here on rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one one. Another website I check on a daily basis, Consumer World. Yeah, I check a lot.
Of websites on a daily basis.
This is run by Edgar Dwarski, and Edgar is on the line.
Edgar, thanks for joining.
Me, Hi, Rich, thanks for having me on the program.
Thanks for doing this.
You posted about let's see ten tips to bag a Black Friday bargain. Now you've been covering this stuff for a long time. First off, just tell me about the website consumerworld dot org.
Well, I started Consumer World probably back in nineteen ninety five, you know, three months after Amazon and eBay who were born.
I should only.
Make half their money, oh Man, or a tiny percentage of their money. It's basically consumer education website. I'm a consumer lawyer. I've worked at the AG's office in Massachusetts, and I try to teach people how to be smart with their money, don't get taken by scam. And since I'm a bargain hunter at heart, I always look for a bargain of the week and once a year I
do my top tips to find Black Friday bargains. And let me tell you, it's getting harder and harder every year because of the way retailers have kind of jumped the gun.
What do you mean by that?
Retailers used to have Black Friday novel idea on Black Friday itself, and then they started offering deals on Thanksgiving, and then they started on Wednesday before Black Friday, and then Sunday before Black Friday. Now as soon as November
rolls around, they do multiple things. I mean, for example, Walmart did part one of their Black Friday sale and it began I think on the eighth or ninth of the month, and it's already over, and those deals are not necessarily being repeated, so you don't know when to strike.
Like the old days, you knew that you were getting the best on you know, Black Friday, if it was a doorbuster or whatever. Now it's just getting tougher because the time is getting longer, and so you're like, wait, do I get it?
Now?
Do you think it's gonna be better closer to the holiday? So I understand that exactly.
So it's very difficult to know. And this year the ads. You know, there are several websites that get the ads leaked to them so you can do your comparison, but even those were late this year. I mean, for example, home Depot and Low's still haven't put their ads out for Black Friday itself, so who knows what kind of great deals they're going to have then.
Well, so your first tip is to read the ads. And so, like you said, it could be tough to get some of these, but to look at the ads that's obviously number one.
Then look at the ads. Go to Blackfriday dot gottadal dot com. Most of the ads are there, so you can kind of let your fingers do the walking and begin to write down model numbers of ones that you're interested in, and then you say to valuate the deals, right, you know, getting getting a good price on allows your product is no bargain. So there are TV's galore, you know, go to I happen to Like r things dot com,
r T I n G s dot com. I'm sure you've recommended to your listeners other places to check reviews and see is this really a good TV or not? And the same thing with other products, you know, go to consumer reports, read reviews, you know on Amazon and best Buy and Target. They want to be educated and not just be lured by, you know, forty percent off fifty percent off list price when no one ever pays the list price.
Yeah, and the website that has the funny name camelcammelcammel dot com. That's a great one for Amazon because you can pop in a ur L and you know, a product and you know, let's say Amazon is selling something for you know, eighty dollars. You can look at the price history. How has it been eighty dollars seventeen times this year? Or is this the lowest price it's ever been? And so that's a really good way to do it.
Oh, absolutely, that was That was my third tip because most of us don't track product prices all year, so how do you know if what they're advertising really is a good deal or not. And as you say, you know, look at Camel, Camel Camel, see what the price history was at least at Amazon and some of the third party sellers.
What's this triple play you're talking about?
This is mostly at JC, Penny and Coal's. The idea is to maximize your savings. Look for great deals. To start with, is there a coupon so you can get an extra twenty percent off or five dollars off a twenty five dollars purchase, and then see if there's a rebate. So if you get all three, even though it's technically a triple play, I think that's a home run.
Now, what about these you say to you know, the early bird gets the lacklustered doorbusters, and then you say to beat the early birds.
What do you mean by that.
Well, basically you need to be early. These are limited quantity deals, particularly on the better bargains, and sometimes you know, some places like Walmart, for example, puts the items online prior to it being available in the store, and you know, there's not unlimited quantities. You're not going to be able to get a rain check, so you got to be early, whether it's going online to get it as soon as the sale begins or going to the store when the
door's open. I tell you, I miss the days that you have to get up at four in the morning and go out to Cohl's or Staples for a five am or six am opening.
And I did that many many times in my earlier years because it was so fun. It was almost like you had this camaraderie with folks that were standing out there.
Because absolutely you bonded with the other crazy people like you exactly and the doors open and to be this mad dash, all that's gone. As I said at the top, retailers have taken the fun out of Black Friday by stretching it out all month.
Any other tip that you want to mention.
Just, you know, get a gift receipt if you're going to give the thing as a present. And one of my big tips be sure you keep checking prices just because you think you've you know, filled most of the items on your shopping list. The shopping in comparison pricing
doesn't end. There many stores have price match guarantees, So keep looking at the ads, and if there's a better price before the period runs out at the particular retail, go back to the store and get back the difference, and if they balk at it, return it and then repurchase it.
There you go.
Do you think people are getting scammed more now or back when you started? Consumer World?
In general? I just think scams are far more prevalent. I mean, in nineteen ninety five, the internet was very new, you know, so we're talking about so many years later. I think scammed, particularly around the holidays. Just be careful, don't click on links, and I'm sure you've taught your listeners hover over the links, see where it's really going.
My favorite the stuff, my favorite thing that you post, by the way, is the shrink flation stuff, because I mean, I'm not kidding, every product that I remember from you know, my childhood or whatever, it's all just smaller. Everything's just tinier. But it's like the same price, if not more, right.
And if you don't pay attention to the net weight or the net count and size of sheets on paper towels and toilet paper, you're really getting less for your money. It's a sneaky way to pass on a price increase.
All right, we're going to leave it there.
Edgar Dwarski, founder of Consumerworld dot org.
Check out his website.
It is definitely a great a great stop each and every day to kind of see what the world is, what the world needs to know about shopping and deals and all that stuff.
Thanks for joining us.
Okay, that's fine, I'll take I do it every day, but you know, but for yeah, once a week is great.
Thanks for joining me today.
Thanks.
Ch All right, let's see. Let me tell you about this quickly before the break. Apple is extending its Emergency SOS via satellite for an extra year for free. So when this first came out on iPhone fourteen, they said users were going to get it for two years. They have now extended that for a third year. And this is available on the iPhone fourteen and fifteen models. This allows you to text with emergency services even if you
don't have a cellular or Wi Fi signal. It will reach up into space and find a satellite and get your message for help through. And I actually interviewed a woman who was on a hike and she fell. Actually she didn't fall, she just stepped on some ground that gave way and her ankle popped and broke basically, and she was stranded, and her friend tried dialing nine one one on their phone and it didn't work, and she goes here, try my phone, and lo and behold, it
had this new feature. She even know about it, and it connected to the satellites. I interviewed the first responders and they said, yeah, these things are literally saving lives on a weekly basis. So I'm still waiting for Android to get this feature. But if you have it on your iPhone fourteen or fifteen, get familiar with it. It's called Emergency SOS via satellite. It could definitely save your life.
The other takeaway I had from interviewing the first responders is don't discount texting nine one one, Like a lot of places will let you text nine one one, And even if you don't have this satellite feature, try texting nine one one if you don't have a signal, because sometimes that'll go through and it sounds like when you text nine one one, a lot of these places will get your location and other data about you that can
really help them find you. So obviously calling nine one one still kind of like the gold standard, but texting, if it's available where you are, if you ever needed it, that's a really good way to get in touch with first responders. And a lot of people don't even realize that's a thing. So check it out. See if the city that you live in or the county you live in offers texting to nine one one. A lot of
them do, which was very surprising to me. Coming up after the break, I'm gonna tell you how to check the emergency settings on the Samsung, on the Pixel on the iPhone, so you are fully prep no matter which phone you have for an emergency, hopefully you never need it. Plus your calls at Triple eight Rich one o one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Karen in Orange County, you're on with Rich.
Hi, how are you? I gotta tell you I listened to Leo Laporte for yours and you were killing it.
Oh thank you, I mean so much.
I don't want to put him down. No, No, Leo it's justos for what you're doing.
Thank you. I just take a little different approach. I love Leo.
I think that he did a great job and still does on his.
Show, an excellent job. I'm just yeah, it's pretty hard to step in somebody else and shoes and do that's a fine job that you're doing well. Thank you, And I'm very very untechi. You're gonna probably tell me in the second one I'm doing wrong. But I acquired a new credit card a few months ago for the bonus points of course, like those of us cent are into that du so, I could use it towards a airfare or a hotel and I always paid off within the next month.
Okay, good this time.
I mean I would never get a credit card unless I did that. I learned my lesson medi.
So did I.
I yeah, I got the free T shirt in college, and next thing you know, I had five thousand dollars worth of debt and I don't know where it went. I have no idea how I acquired it, but it took me.
My friend talked me into doing it, and I could have killed him when all of a sudden, all these charges show up. That's why he's an X anyway. I you know, I study religiously my credit card statements, just like I do my checking out every morning. The first thing I do when I wake up, after I make my coffee is to see if there's any unouth right charges. So on this new credit card, and I don't know if you want me to mention the bank or not. There's this unouth right charge and it's PayPal. I don't
use PayPal. I did years ago only to help out my nephew in another city because he needed money and I didn't. I didn't have a way to. I wouldn't. I don't send checks or I don't do anything like that, so it is right. I called the credit card company. Usually this is taking care of in a split second. They go, well, we have to call the party you paid the money to, And I said, why did you
know who they are? And I do donate to several animal organizations, but that's why I've never heard of They're not even in the United States, They're in counter and so they go, well, we'll call them. I said that I'm telling you right now, it's not an osright churne. So they insisted on doing their thing, and then the credit.
Card or the or PayPal.
Credit card okay?
Good? So credit card okay?
So, I mean at the end of the day, since it is a credit card, you just don't pay if it's not, you know, you just dispute it.
Look figure, But they keep putting it. They reversed charges and put it back on my billigin and I said, I'm not paying for something I never all run okay, And then I called the company and they're going, well, you know, we don't we can't control it. PayPal this you know they charged us to see if we reverse it. I excuse me, anyway, I still don't. I called back this credit card company and I said, are you kidding me?
How how do you.
I've never in my home and I've had I have a have a Who cares that my credit rating as above eight hundred? I said, who done this?
Though?
I said I didn't own ra take away all the company said that it went through faith.
Now all right, well here's here's here's what I think you should do, Karen. So a couple things. Number One, ditch this credit card because they suck the fact that they are questioning your dispute is just absolutely insane to me. So you got to get a new card or no card at all if you want to avoid stuff like this in the future. And I understand it's scary to use debit because you know, if something like this happens with a debit card, it's on you and it's not
on your credit card. So you got to this card is no good because there this company is really really bad. So that's number one. Number two, you got to go into your PayPal account. So it sounds to me like your PayPal account was either hacked or you did make some sort of payment on this account a long time ago and it turned into a recur or authorized payment, and this can happen, and this is what you know.
These companies are set up like this.
They want you to they want this to happen, and so they make it really easy to make these transactions recurring, and they make it really tricky to find the root of them. And I just logged into my PayPal to kind of see where all this stuff lives, and it took me a bit to find it. And I do have a couple of recurring payments on my PayPal and so you know, these are things that every year they
surprise me. I go, oh, yeah, I forgot I put that on my PayPal And of course we all do this, and they love that we do this because everyone gets a little piece of these payments. So log into your PayPal count. If you can't remember what your information is, you got to do a password reset whatever. Get into your account, press the settings. First thing you need to do is just look at your your activity and see
the activity on there. And if there's any activity that you don't recognize, like me, I've got a payment in August for thirty eight dollars. You can look at this payment and there's a re or a problem. So that is the number one thing you can do to figure out, you know, if that payment was wrong, you can press that button. The other thing is to see if these
are recurring payments. So go into the settings. That's the gear icon upper right hand corner, and you will see what is labeled as payments up at the top, and you click that and you're gonna see online purchases, in store purchases, and then you scroll down it says automatic payments, View and update all of your subscriptions and automatic payments. Now I think this should be on the front page of PayPal. Of course, it is one, two, three, at
least three clicks in and a scroll. So you go there and you can now see all the different things that you have linked to your PayPal, and for me, it's a whole bunch of stuff. Some donations I've done. Netflix. At one point I must have had connected to hear Skype Doctor Squatch, which I do like. I like their soap. I'll admit I made fun of them during the Super Bowl commercials and I end up buying it and I
love it. So that's on my PayPal apparently. And then you can go to your inactive so if you want to get rid of those payments, go in there and make sure they are either stopped or disconnected. And then that will you know, says remove PayPal as a payment method on my bill aer here direct TV, and so you can remove that as a payment method, and it says this will cancel your auto pay for Direct TV. You can do that and then you can make sure
that that will never be charged again. The other thing I would say to do is go to your wallet on PayPal and remove all of your payment methods. So right now I have at least one, two, three, four payment methods on there. You can go through and remove those, and they may be tricky and they may not let you remove like the last one, but hopefully you can remove all of those. And if that credit card that you're talking about is on there, you should remove that as well.
So, Karen, that's what I'd recommend.
And if you listen to this show, which just sounds like you do, you know, I'm not a huge fan of credit cards. I do try to default to cash and debit as much as possible, but I understand they are sort of a necessary evil, especially when you're playing the points game, which can be kind of fun, but you can also get burned. So just be careful out there,
rich on Tech. That closes out this hour. We'll be back with more rich on Tech at Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here talking tech at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on most of the media. I Instagram, Facebook threads. Oh I did something on Instagram which is kind of fun. I'm still trying to figure
out what the point of it is. But it's called a broadcast channel, so it's called rich on Tech Direct, and if you join, I can basically send you links in your messages of you know, stuff I think is important or interesting.
So I don't really know how you sign up.
I guess you just go to my Instagram and just somehow on there it says join the broadcast channel. I think you can go to my stories too, But anyway, I got a couple thousand of you on there, and like last night, on a Friday night, I just sent a I sent a voice memo and so I could just like literally talk to you.
It's so weird.
It's kind of like, I guess it's kind of like the radio because you can't talk back, though that's the weird thing.
You can't respond, so it's like a one way street.
So I'm still trying to figure out like what the point of it is, but it's kind of fun, I guess for links anyway, So if you're on Instagram at rich on Tech, check out the rich on Tech Direct And if you want a link to anything I mentioned here, just go to.
Rich on Tech dot tv.
I'm coming up and going to tell you how to set up the emergency settings on your Samsung, on your Pixel, on your iPhone. But first, let's Bill's been on hold for a while, So let's get to Bill in Altadena, California.
Bill, you're on with Rich.
Hey.
Rich, So I have an Alexa and we got a smart plug and we gave it a command to go on at a certain time, and it's been the wrong and we've been unable to cancel that instruction keeps going on at the wrong time of day.
Okay, I lost you a little bit there. So you basically set up a smart plug. You you gave it a routine, and now you can't get rid of that routine.
Correct.
Okay, have you gone into the Alexa app, Yes, and.
Deleted the routine, but it still continues on.
Oh wow, on even after the routine is dead.
Uh yeah, Well you sound like my story at the beginning, because these things seem to have a mind to their own. An Alexa specifically, it seems to really like root its way into a lot of stuff.
Now, there's a couple of things that could be happening here. Number one, have do you do you want to just remove this plug altogether from your Alexa or do you.
Still want to be able to remove it and reinstall it?
Yeah, I mean that's an option that's like the nuclear option. If you want to try that, that might be the best way to do it if you can't figure it out. But there's a couple of things. So Alexa does this thing called hunches. I don't think it's that because it's happening at the same time every day, the exact time that.
You set it.
Correct.
Okay, So it sounds like either this plug is sort of like hard coded to turn on and off. Did you use the Alexa app to create this routine or did you use the what's the brand.
Of this plug?
Amazon?
Oh, it's Amazon's own plug Okay.
So it is the but use we use the Alexa to create it?
You did use the Alexa to create it? Okay?
So I think, uh, it sounds like you want to remove this from your Alexa altogether. Have you tried doing that by going into devices and then and then settings and then trashing that device?
Have you tried that?
Uh?
Oh, trashing the whole Alexa device?
No, well, the the just the smart plug.
No, we haven't.
So that's the.
First thing I would do. So open up the app and open up go to all device or go to devices and then go to all devices, select that device whatever that plug is. If you have a bunch of them, it may may take you a little bit to figure out which one it is. Uh, select that plug and then choose settings, and then there's a way to trash it and that will remove it from your Alexa completely, and then you want to go through the repairing process of setting it back up with your Alexa, which.
Should be pretty quick and easy. Yeah, yeah, added device.
That would be probably what I would do first. The other thing you can do is just factory reset the actual plug, and usually that will erase all of the commands. The problem is if once you repair it and Alexis says, oh, it's the same plug, it may just send it that
command again, and that that could be a possibility. So I have some of these smart plugs, and I'm not kidding, Bill, I have set up like five, six, seven years ago, and they still every year I plug them in for the holidays and they still just follow the routine that I put on them, like literally eight years ago. And so these things do last or like a you know, it's like a zombie, they just continue to follow the
same thing. And then the other side of this is that some of these devices, like a Weimo or a Genie or a Greenie, whatever the name is, sometimes they have their own apps, and if you set up the routine or the time on off through those apps, they may continue to follow through with that routine even if you're not using that app, or if you delete it from your phone. So it kind of hard codes the device to say, hey, go in on this time, going on that time, or does it from.
A server level.
So there's a lot of different ways that these things can get very very confusing, very fast. But what I would do is just delete that device altogether, maybe do a factory reset on it, and you can just Google for the instructions on how to do that for that specific device, but I think that should help. Once you
repair it, it should be gone. But just make sure you go into your routines and make sure that those that that routine is not still in there, because these things have a way of kind of like living on forever, and Alexa has an interesting way of finding these devices even when you've sort of said stop doing stuff with them. So it's meant to make things easier. Sometimes it can make things a little tougher. But Bill, keep me posted. Okay,
give me an email on the website. Let me know if you got it figured out, because I do want to help you change this from happening. Okay, I promised you instructions for this, so I talked about Apple extending the Emergency SOS. But on any phone, whether you have an iPhone, whether you have Samsung, or whether you have a Pixel, there are emergency settings that you need to set up on your phone. So number one, iPhone, go into your settings, go into Emergency SOS, and there's a
couple of things you need to do. Number one, there is an option called call after Severe Crash. So the recent iPhones have a way to detect if you've been in a crash, and they will alert your emergency contacts and or nine will one, So you want to have that turned on. The other thing you want to have turned on is your emergency contacts. So if you have not set up your emergency contacts, set those up. Take a second to do that. And the way that you
do that is right underneath emergency contacts. It'll say edit in health and that'll bring you to add an emergency contact add someone and they can get a text with your location, the fact that something happened to you, and they can hopefully help out if something or did happen. The other thing you want to do is, if you have an iPhone fourteen or fifteen, get familiar with this emergency SOS via Satellite demo. So scroll all the way down under Emergency SOS in the settings and if it
says emergency SOS via Satellite Demo, try it out. It won't actually call nine one one, but it will look into the satellites in the sky and help you, you know, kind of coordinate your phone because you do have to have a clear vision of the sky or a clear view of the sky, and you do have to move your phone around to get that clear view.
And so you can just try that out.
And then in the health app, so open up the health app on your iPhone and set up your medical ID. So to do that, you go to your profile which is in the upper right hand corner. You tap medical ID and you put in your information your basics. You know your height, your weight, and also any allergies you
might have. And then you want to make sure both of those emergency access options are enabled, and that will enable a first responder to access this information from your home screen or I should say your lock screen, even without being able to unlock your phone. Very very important on Samsung. Go to Settings Safety and Emergency again, Settings Safety and Emergency, tap Medical Info, hit the pencil in
the upper right hand corner, add edit your Info. Make sure that show unlock screen is enabled again, that will enable a first responder to access this information without unlocking your phone. Then tap Emergency Contacts. Add those again, make sure show onlock screen is enabled, and finally, under Emergency SOS, make sure share info with with Emergency Contacts is enabled, and then just check the settings under emergency Sharing. I'll
share a funny story real quick. I was setting this up on my Samsung device and I put my mother in law in to test it out, and I'm not kidding. I hit an option that actually sent her a text that said something had happened to me, and it sent a picture and the picture of was my legs like between my life thanks because that's where the phone was. Thankfully I was wearing pants because that would have been really embarrassing. She goes, what's this picture you just sent me?
And I said, oh my gosh, what and sure enough the phone had sent a picture. So be careful when you set up these settings that you're not actually doing the test on pixel. Go to settings safety and Emergency and make sure the medical information and emergency contacts is set up. Make sure emergency SOS and car crash detection is turned on. Yes, the pixel has car crash detection. Then you want to open up the personal safety app
on the pixel. Fill out your medical information and your emergency contacts, and make sure that emergency info access is enabled so that nine will one call centers will get your location if you ever called them or texted them. All this information is on my Instagram. Go to Instagram at rich on tech and you'll see it is pinned to my profile. It says, don't wait, set up these life saving phone features today. All those instructions I just
gave you you on Instagram at rich on tech. All right, coming up, we've got more of your calls, more of your questions. Plus we're gonna talk to Vitally Pacharski of Slick Deals to highlight some of the top deals out there for the holiday shopping season. Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four one zero one.
This is rich On Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Triple eight Rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're talking to Vitally Pacharski of Slick Deals.
He's going to highlight some of.
The top deals out there for the holiday shopping season. Buzz is in Walnut Creek, California. Buzz you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, So I'm not here on I five actually driving along with all the other not yet. And it could to be that a dash cam would be kind of a nice add on, not a test list. So it just because do you have any I don't know, Buyer's guide suggestion, something that will help filter the million reviews and that sort of thing. I'd like to be able to see the front camer just in case here is a collision, I can at please put that video evidence.
Yeah, and here's the thing. The interesting thing about the rear camera is that unless it's on your bumper, you're not really going to get a full kind of rear video. So there are some cameras that I've seen in the past that do attached back there, but most of them just have like a front facing camera and a camera
that faces inside the car. And so, of course, the one time that I needed this, and I do have a Tesla, the one time I needed it, I wasn't rolling and so it wasn't recording when I got hit and run on my car. So yes, I do think a dash cam is definitely I'm just gonna mute you there because here's some I hear the I five in the background there. But you know, I do think that the dash especially in California or anywhere. I mean, it's just it's kind of like peace of mind. And so
I agree. There are many many reviews out there, and I've tested a couple of these over the years. I've test tested a company called Nexsar, which is which makes some really nice dash cams and they connect nicely to the iPhone that's any Xaar. I've also connect tested a company called Vava va Va and they have some really great dash cams as well, and they're pretty inexpensive, so and I thought they were really This one was really great, the Vava ten ADP dual dash cam. And so I'm
looking at this dash cam. It actually looks like you can put the front lens. It's interesting. It looks like there's a little lens that you can put kind of in the back, which they didn't have when I had this, so that may be able to go, yeah, into the rear of your car. So that's one hundred and nineteen dollars.
The other brands that some of the other review sites like, and I know you said there's a bunch of reviews out there, Yes there are, but some of the brands kind of come up over and over, and that is Van True v A N T r U E. Wirecutter has them as a top pick. And then another brand that a lot of reviewers seem to like is called Thinkware T h I N K W A R E, Nextspace n E X T B A s C that's another one that a lot of them like.
And Garmin Garman.
You might know that brand name from other products, but they apparently make some decent dash cams. But you want the front and back cameras for sure. Some of the features I would look for is, you know, it's really comes down to the software, the ability to download the video from these cameras if you ever need it, and the SD card. So you want to have expandable memory.
You want to have nice software. You want to have high quality video, because some of these the video is just not very good, Like if you ever needed to get a license plate or something, you wouldn't be able to see it. So those are the things that I
would look for personally. The one that I really like is actually the Ring dash cam, and I know it's gotten kind of mixed reviews, but I really like it and I think it works pretty well, and so I would check that one as well if you do have Ring devices in your house.
If you don't, then don't worry about it.
But the Ring, what I like about it is it has cellular connectivity, which means if something happens to your car, it will upload that video to the cloud, and so even if they stole the camera or something like that,
you'd still have that video. And so it's a little bit more on the pricey side, but it looks like it's out of stock actually, but all of these cameras are going to be on sale for the holidays, so it's probably a good time to get them, and they're probably going to be a good a good stocking stuffer this year. So the other thing is I would look for a G four sensor so if someone knocks into your car, it will automatically start recording, So you want
to have one that does that as well. And the other thing to look out for is really the power. Some of these can be kind of bulky. You do have to run a power cable to your you know, to your car somehow, and they all kind of connect differently, like, for instance, the ring one connects to the oh gosh, I always get this name wrong.
OBD Gosh, is it the OBD two port? I think that's what it's called.
But it's like this little kind of plug in the lower left hand corner of your car, near the near your your driver's side like foot, and so that gets its power from there. Other others go into like a USB port or what you would call twelve volt used to be called the cigarette lighter.
Now it's called the twelve vault.
So buzz. Hopefully you got some good suggestions. They are good things to look for. Also, keep an eye out for deals, because I'm sure a lot of these things will go on sale throughout the holiday season. Zell this is important. Zell is finally going to start refunding people if they get scammed. This is a big, big change for ZEL. So if you've tried Zel, it's the one that's built into your bank account. It's the one that the big banks started to combat all the people using
venmo and PayPal. So this was started by all these big banks like Chase and Bank of America. They said, hey, we want a little piece of that, and so they started ZEL and they made it really easy because Zell is built into your app on your phone that you already have from your bank, and the money goes straight into your bank account. And there really are no fees
that I've seen on this. But the problem is because it's so easy and because it's so integrated into your bank, the scammers love it because as soon as they got the money from you, there is nothing you can do to get that money back. At least with venmo and PayPal you might have a little bit of a fighting chance of saying, hey, wait a second, this wasn't fair. But now Zell has kind of gotten with the times and they said, okay, we are actually going to start
refunding victims of it imposter scams. And I think US regulators were kind of pressuring them to do this. But now people who are duped into sending money to scammers that are pretending to be government agencies, banks or service riders. Now you can ask Zel for your money back and they will actually figure out a way to go into the other person's bank account that you send it to grab that money back out and give it back to you.
It's not gonna be instant, it's not gonna be every single time, but you definitely have a better fighting chance. So thank you Zell for doing something good for the consumer. Coming up next, we'll talk slick Deals on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple eight Rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you want links to anything I've mentioned throughout the show, just go to the wiki rich on Tech dot tv
slash wiki. Joining me now is Vitally Pacharski of Slick Deals and uh, welcome to the show.
Hey, Rich, thanks for having me.
Thanks for joining me. I know we talked.
The listeners don't know this, but we talked this week at KTLA. We did a segment that's going to air Monday on TV. But you were such a great resource for TV that I said, Hey, can you come on the radio show and talk about some of the top deals out there. So thanks for joining me today, and let's talk about slick Deals number one. Because I've mentioned throughout all the guests today have been from websites I visit on a daily basis, Slick Deals is another one
of those. Explain what slick Deals is all about.
Well, stick Deals is really all about helping shoppers. It's not just a website at this point. We have the website, of course, which has been with us for quite some time. We have a very active mobile app, and we also have a browser extension to help you fill coupons and
find the best deals. But really what we are is a community of twelve million strong shoppers who come to the site or to the platform daily posting, sharing, vetting, voting up commenting on the best deals from your favorite retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Dell, Lenobo.
That's what I love about the website is that anyone can submit a deal and it can be voted up to the top. And that means that since you have all these crawlers out there on the web, and I mean crawlers by like regular people that are always just like, oh, I found something really good. They post it and other people kind of vet it and say, Okay, this is really good, let's vote it up. And then a lot of times those things sell out because they're so popular.
That's exactly right.
I think that's that's the most powerful feature that we have is the community. Without them, the site would be not nearly as stressworthy. I said, it's twelve million people, right, I think of them as toll million friends, the good friends that will tell you how good your product or your deal that you found is or how bad it is, and provide unbiased feedback.
So how can people use this to find the best deals this holiday season?
Depending on how you like to shop, we have probably something for everybody. If you are on a portunistic shopper, the website and the mobile app are your best destinations. Mobile app is something to keep on the go. The website is something that you keep with you on your computer. But if you're more of a casual shopper, consider also
using a browser extension. It kind of lives with your browser, whether it's Chrome, edged Safari, or Firefox, and once you install it, we'll let you know if we have additional discounts. Anytime you browse the popular shopping site, or if we have amazing deals happening right this moment, as you're shopping on Amazon, Macy's, Coals, you name it, we'll pop up a little small notification saying, hey, by the way, while you're here, we have a couple of amazing community vetted deals.
If you're interested, you can absolutely participate.
Okay, So how are the deals shaping up this season?
Are they better than yours past?
The deals are really good this Friday. We've already seen a lot of retail this block Friday, in Cyber Monday, we've seen a lot of retailers start early as they have done in the years past. We definitely are seeing them, have seen them as early as October. And one thing that we are noticing is you already mentioned rich deals do tend to sell out. So if you come to the site of the mobile app and if you see something, grab it. But guess what, we're not only about in
the moment shopping. If you're looking for something that we currently don't have today, we also provide an amazing feature called deal Alerts. So if you're looking for something like Legos or PlayStation five, or Airpod's pro or a new grill, or as me, I'm building a home theater, I'm looking
for speakers and receivers. Right now, come to the site or the mobile app and set yourself a deal alert and we'll let you know through either email, SMS if you sign up with a phone number, or a push notification on the mobile app the next time a good deal drops.
So this is always sort of a debate, But what do you think are some of the best categories this time of year? Employees wondered do I buy a TV during Black Friday or during the Super Bowl season.
Electronics is usually a great thing to buy and Black Friday in Cyber Monday, and really majority of categories are
on sale, whether it's apparel, whether it's grills. But what we usually see gaming, smart home devices, headphones, video games, lots of tabletop kitchen appliance is everything from the most basic five dollars toaster, which we can actually have a few this Black Friday, all the way up to the higher end appliances like maybe a Ninja blender or maybe even something more even more expensive like a really nice kitchen aid mixer.
Discounted gift cards can batteries.
Can never have enough of those, especially for that holiday morning when you opened your boxes. Streaming and subscription services, this is a great time to get those. A lot of them will come out with you know, significant discounts, especially if you prepay for a year, security, cameras, sporting goods, equipments, really anything.
It's it's a really broad thing.
One thing that we don't see as much of is major appliances, you know, washers, dryers, dishwashers, probably not the best time to buy, but we'll see an occasional deal here and there.
Are you seeing any new trends with the way retailers are discounting things? You mentioned that with the streaming services. I've noticed that, Yeah, when you pay in advance, like I just paid for like a year of Disney Plus and I got a pretty good deal on that. So any kind of pricing trends you're seeing with discounts.
You know, I think a lot more and more merchants are thinking about sort of creating a premium customer segment. We've seen this with Amazon Prime many years ago, and now Amazon Prime is sort of like almost a must to have if you're an Amazon shopper, Walmart Plus has been doing the same thing. In fact, some of the best Black Frieda deals get early access if you have Walmart Plus.
We suspect that more and more.
Merchants will have similar programs coming out in years to come. Additionally, a lot of the times, having a credit card that is issued by the stores, such as an Amazon Prime Visa or say a Target Red Card, we'll get your additional benefits, whether it's discounts or free shipping.
So it's worth looking into as well.
It's interesting with the Walmart Plus and the best Buy or sorry Walmart Plus and Amazon. Best Buy is also doing that with their drops. And so I've noticed because they've been sending me emails about some of their deals. A lot of them you get, like if you have to like their I think it's like total something.
It's like best Buy.
It's like some sort of membership program that best Buy has you can get a bigger discount on some of their deals, so that.
It's called total tech almost like rich on Tech.
There you go, rich on Tech, Total tech. All right, what about travel deals?
Is it? You know?
I know people are just trying to get through their budget with their gifts they want to get, But is it a good time to book travel.
It is it, actually, it is, especially if you live near a one of the major airports like Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. Lots of deals going on. I'll give you one example right now. Short short trip fairs like LA to San Francisco on Jet Blue or United are down to seventy eight bucks normally and ninety eight dollars. If you don't live next to a major airport, don't you know, don't worry. We actually have a deal on a Southwest gift card that is discounting twenty percent off.
It's a five hundred dollars Southwest gift card on sale for four hundred bucks, and that's happening at Sam's Club. So you do have to have a SAMs Club membership, but if you already do and it's actually not that expensive, you can get this deal. There's another one if you like vacations and if you like staying at places other than hotels or maybe having some fun activities.
We do have a their BnB gift card at best Buy. It's a four.
Hundred dollar Airbnb gift card and comes with an additional seventy five dollars best Buy gift card for free, so you pay four hundred dollars basically for four hundred and seventy five dollars value.
And then always check your credit cards that you have.
There are some credit cards that are scifically geart to travelers. American Express, for example, always will run different promotions, but also check the rewards. A lot of the times, credit cards, especially today, will offer sign up bonuses, so look for additional sign up points, and you can always come to Slick deals. We actually have plenty of interesting offers on credit cards specifically too.
I just went to your website and I always check out the front page deals, and one that made it there is this Uber one. So a year, I pay like ten bucks a month for Uber one, and you've got to Slick deals here for forty seven to fifty for the whole year, which is a huge savings. Now, some of these deals, and this is probably something we should talk about, are sort of what's called targeted, So these companies will only offer them to a certain segment of their customer base.
Right, that's true, and that's what our community does really well.
They'll quickly explain to you.
It's like, hey, if you're not a new customer, then you won't qualify, so you can kind of look through this bypass those deals if you know.
Longer are eligible for these promos.
And again, that's kind of one of the biggest powers that the superpower of flictos is having this community of people who do this, who sort of completely demystify and really let you understand what's for you and what's not.
Well, look at this, I just found this deal inside my Uber app sixty percent off for the year. So that's I love it. And it's like one of these things and we'll kind of end on this. But when you get a deal, even though we are spending money at the end of the day, why does it feel so good to get that deal?
You know, I'll give.
You a quote that one of our shoppers left with us. We do regular shopper interviews and this is verbatim. My biggest happiness from online shopping is not the shopping itself, but finding a really good deal. I think a lot of us are either sports fans or are just competitive people by nature, and I think it always feels like scoring when you find that amazing deal. And yes, as you said, you still spend money, but it makes you feel good that you spend your money smartly.
I'm paying right now one hundred and nineteen dollars a year for this uber plan, and this deal that I just found on your website is forty eight dollars for the year. That's four dollars a month, so sixty percent off. So it was money I was going to spend anyway, and now I'm spending less of it, so it does feel good. And again, the website is slickdeals dot net and my guest Vitally Pacharski of slick Deals, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks so much for having me Rich.
I know you have your eye on something. What do you have your eye on this this holiday?
See?
What are you shopping for?
I'm shopping for a home theater setup.
I'm building kind of a closed room, dark everything home theater so receivers, speakers and a really nice for K projector.
M very nice.
I was just looking at my Sonos today thinking, hmm, I wonder if I should update my soundbar.
It's been a while, all right. Thanks so much for joining me on the website.
If you want a link to it, just go to Rich on tech dot tv slash wiki and you can get the link to Slick Deals again. Slick Deals front page is a great place to start your day if you like that hunt, you know, if you like shopping, and if you like these deals and if you like
finding stuff that you might want to purchase. And the explanations are the best because they make it really clear as to why this is a good deal and why you might want to jump on it, and how to do it most importantly, all right, coming up, we'll close out the show with a couple more stories and your feedback. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology, and it's time for your favorite segment feedback.
But before we get to that, let me get through a few other stories. I wanted to mention Verizon now offering unlimited individual cloud storage for fourteen bucks a month. So this is a new cloud storage plan for individual person fourteen dollars a month month. Let's you store photos, videos, documents, PDFs, whatever you want from both your phone and computers. So it's basically a cloud drive that's unlimited.
Now.
According to the Verge, individual files can exceed ten gigabytes daily uploads or limited to fifty gigabytes, but for most people this will pretty much be unlimited. They also have a group unlimited plan for twenty dollars a month, which lets you have five friends and family have their own unlimited storage. So I actually signed up for that just to test it out. For some reason, Verizon was offering it to me for fourteen dollars a month. I don't
know why, but I signed up. But you get one month free, So I just pulled the you know, just decided to do it and see what it's all like.
And so I installed it on my computer.
I have not installed it on my phone, but basically it lets you back up. I'm trying to figure out if you can drag stuff into this and drop it in. It seems like you can, but it's a little I'm still working on it, but anyway, it's kind of a good deal for fourteen dollars a month unlimited, it's not bad.
So if you want to back up your photos or whatever.
The only thing is it is linked to a carrier like Verizon, so not everyone wants to link their online world to their cell phone carrier. Amazon is going to start selling cars online. Yes, Hyundai and Amazon have teamed up to offer online vehicle sales, which is just incredible. I hope this is as good as it seems. So Amazon is going to launch online vehicle sales starting with Hyundai in twenty twenty four. You can purchase a car on Amazon and pick it up from your local dealer.
The question is will this be a nice kind of experience or will the dealers muck it up? I hope they don't. I really really hope this is like you see the price, you pay it, and you go pick up your car. Let's hope it's just like that. But that's a great start. And one of the things I did buy my car online last time, and it was incredible. The entire process was online from start to finish, and
then they just delivered it to my driveway. And it was such a great process because guess what, I didn't have to go in that back room where the guy sits there with the four squares and starts writing down payment monthly, this, that, and then you got to go back how much you offer them. It's like buying a car is the worst experience in the world. And I always say, these people that are selling the cars, they are doing it every single day, and they know exactly
how to do it. We go in once every three to six years to negotiate and guess who's gonna win in that circumstance.
Yeah, they are.
And I got an email from a listener that said they got an email from Spectrum.
Here's what the email says.
During the week of December twelfth, twenty twenty three, We're going to introduce a new default video resolution setting a four to EIGHTP for our unlimited plus mobile customers, allowing better data management over the cellular network. Uh huh, better data management for who? For Spectrum, they buy their service from Verizon, So this means they're going to switch this setting to be lower for all of their customers, which means they have to pay Verizon less because they're using
less data. It does not benefit the customer in any way. And Spectrum says, if you want to change the video resolution back to seven to twenty P once the feature launches, please visit our support page to learn more. So this actually inspired a post on my website, rich on tech dot TV. All of the carriers AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile, they all have a dirty little secret, and that is they reduce the quality of the video that you get on your smartphone, even if you pay for
a higher resolution. But you can go in and change this if you're on an unlimited plan that allows it. So it's four eighty which is DVD quality by default, you can go in and change it to either ten ADP. Most of the time it's just ten ADP or four k T and Verizon T Mobile. You can do it from the website or from the app. I've put all the instructions on my website. Rich on tech dot tv. If you're paying for unlimited, you might as well get
the HD streaming, all right. Now, let's get to the feedback. Oh, I only have a minute here. Hey, Rich, loved hearing your report about Korea. I've been an Apple guy for a long time. As you were discussing the Samsung Fold, I was walking past the best Buy yep, I walked in in real time you were speaking with the Samsung guy. My initial impression was the resolution was impressive. I'm an iPhone fourteen Pro Max owner doing a side by side
unscientific evaluation. They are pretty close and clarity and definition. Upon closer inspection, I realized the screen attached to the body looked a little honky tonk technical term cheap. I cannot unsee the crease in the fold, which I can only envision cracking. Finally, that improved hinge looks glaringly to my eye like an obvious workaround. Do you love the idea of a foldable device? I remember innovations attempted by Sharp,
but that usually ended up half baked. Love your show, Greg, Thanks for the feedback.
Greg.
Yeah, foldable phones. They're making in roads, but they're not there just yet. If you can believe it, that is going to do it for this episode of the show. It always goes by so fast. Once again, you can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech. I'm on Instagram, Twitter, all the good places there Actually not Twitter, what am I saying? That's on autopilot, No Instagram, Facebook threads, and honestly I'm starting to phase out Twitter or at X whatever they call it. Next week we're
going to talk to Matt Swider of The Shortcut. He's going to talk tech deals plus the latest report from Privacy not included. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. My name is Richdmiro. I'll talk to you real soon, Happy Thanksgiving,