Category Archives: Deals and Steals

Such a deal!

On Honest Reviews

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Why they’re important.

This morning, I got an email message from Etsy asking me to review some beads I’d bought from an Etsy shop.

I am ruthlessly honest when I review a product. I want the seller/maker to know what I think so they can feel good (from a positive review) or fix problems (from a negative review).

I also want other potential buyers to know if a product fell short of expectations or didn’t match descriptions or images. I want to inform other buyers so they either buy a great product or avoid a crappy one or even just know where a product might disappoint them.

One of the things that really gets under my skin is sellers/makers who ask for positive reviews only. WTF? What good is a review if it isn’t honest?

Request for Review
These amethyst beads, in the smallest size shown here, is what I thought I was buying. Nice purple color, no? Etsy asked for a review and explained why.

The beads in question this time around were disappointing. They were amethyst beads (or supposed to be) and the image on the Etsy listing showed bright purple beads in a variety of sizes. I wanted the 4mm size, which I use to make matching necklaces for some of my pendants. A nice purple amethyst and silver bead necklace could even sell on its own — I’ve sold them before — without a matching pendant.

That’s what was going through my head when I clicked the buy button.

What arrived a week later were dull, barely purple beads that bore no resemblance to the photo other than the fact that they were round. They were strung on purple string and, because they were a bit translucent, that color came through a bit — but not as much as the photo! — while they were still strung. Once removed from the string, their true color was revealed and I honestly can’t say they’re purple. More like a dull, purplish gray-black.

Frankly, I’m not even sure they’re amethyst.

I’ll be honest: the beads were cheap and yes, you do get what you pay for. Although it bothered me that the beads didn’t match the photo, it wasn’t worth returning them. I could probably find something to do with them. And even if I didn’t, it wasn’t a huge loss. I considered it a lesson learned. I would not use that shop again.

And then the request for a review came from Etsy. I clicked the link and wrote the review.

I suspect the shop owner will get all pissed off about this. After all, too many shops on Etsy have 5-star review status. Like all of their customers are always happy. How can that be? Is it because these shops ask for positive reviews only?

And please don’t get me started on the number of times I bought an Amazon product or book based on glowing reviews only to have that product fail or that book be total crap?

Why aren’t legitimate reviewers being honest? It only hurts them — and their fellow shoppers — in the end.

My Old TV: Rejuvenated by Roku

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I get a new Roku for my old TV and it’s like getting a new TV.

I’m not a big TV-watcher. I probably spend less than 10 hours a week in front of the tube, and a lot of that is watching late night TV hosts and educational content on YouTube. I don’t have cable or satellite TV and can’t bring in any over-the-air channels. I subscribe to Netflix and Disney Plus, have Amazon Prime video because I want free Amazon shipping, and recently added a one-year free subscription to Apple TV+ because it came with my new iPad.

I got my wasband’s circa 2008 45″ Samsung HDTV in our divorce. (It’s a funny story how I got it, but I blogged about that in passing elsewhere.) At the time — 2013 — it was still a decent TV and it had a surround sound system that worked great when I watched DVDs. I used the Roku stick that I got with it to connect to the Internet for my content. It was slow — like push a button on the remote and wait for Roku to react — but good enough.

I eventually sold the surround sound system on Craig’s List, bought a Blu-Ray player for the TV, and got a Samsung sound bar. (The TV had terrible sound without it.)

Time passed.

After seeing bigger, better TVs in the local Fred Meyer’s electronics department for two years, I finally broke down and bought one. Fred Meyer sells previous years TV models for dirt cheap; I bought a 65″ Samsung UHD smart TV for less than $500 when I combined the sale price and the “senior discount” I got for buying it on the first Tuesday of the month. I felt that I got a pretty good deal on something I would use less than 10 hours a week.

New TV
My new TV — which is at least two years old at this point — sits in the corner of the living room. I had to swap the coffee table for the TV table to get it to fit; the legs have quite a spread. The reflection is my red leather sofa — also an unexpected divorce acquisition — with the pillows and dog bed on it.

What to do with that old TV? Well, I wound up putting it in my bedroom, right across from the brown leather sofa that had (ironically) been in my old house’s TV room. I had to buy a table for it that matched the furniture. I attached the sound bar I’d bought for it to the new TV so it had crappy sound again, but that didn’t matter. By that time, the Roku was so agonizingly slow — especially compared with the new TV — that I lacked the patience to use it. I should add here that other than the little black and white TV I’d had in my first apartment after college (circa 1982), it was the first time I’d ever had a TV in the bedroom so I wasn’t accustomed to watching TV in bed anyway. But what else would I do with it?

Time passed. I rarely used the TV in the bedroom. The Roku stick made it unbearably slow.

I started talking to a neighbor about giving it to her. Literally giving it to her. She had a TV in her guest room that was on the fritz. Although my old Samsung was a lot bigger than what she wanted/needed, she said she’d take it. We just needed to wait for her husband’s cousin to get into town to help us carry it downstairs.

But I started thinking about other possibilities. It seemed to me that the thing that was slowing the TV down and making it an ordeal to use was the old Roku stick that was now 13 years old. Maybe a newer Roku would speed it up?

I asked on Twitter. Some folks said it wouldn’t be any better. Someone else suggested the Roku Streambar, which combined a sound bar with a Roku receiver. I looked it up. It happened to be on sale for $109 (from a normal price of $129) with free shipping and a 30-day money-back guarantee. I had nothing to lose. I’d give it a try and if it was still slow, I’d return it and get rid of the TV.

Roku Streambar
The Roku Streambar and its remote. It’s actually pretty small and doesn’t sound nearly as good as my Samsung sound bar on my new TV, but it’s good enough for me.

It arrived last week. I set it up Thursday night.

And I was (eventually) amazed.

After a few tries, the Roku connected to my 5G wifi network. (I’d tried connecting it to the two other networks first and it apparently didn’t like them, even though the signals were stronger.) I went through the setup process. It worked great — super fast, too — and even configured itself with the same channels I’d had set up on the old TV. At first, it didn’t play sound through the speaker and I couldn’t figure out why. I fiddled with the TV settings and cables and other stuff, and then restarted the Roku by mistake (I pulled out the wrong cable). When it started running again, the sound came through the Roku speaker. It worked just as it should.

The TV could be controlled by the small Roku remote — although I assume I’ll have to change the source with the TV remote if I ever want to watch a DVD. The remote even has a push to talk voice controller for switching channels and changing the volume.

And did I mention that it was fast?

I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was like getting a new TV.

TV w/Roku
My old TV in the bedroom. Yes, I do have to clean up those wires. The reflection in the TV is the window behind the sofa; you can see the top of my head, too.

Unfortunately for Terry, I’m going to keep the TV, at least for a while. I suggested she check out Fred Meyer. They’re still selling great TVs for great prices and she’ll likely get a better one than mine.

The Wink Debacle

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Wink convinces me that it’s time to switch home automation systems.

When I built my home in 2014 I decided that I wanted it to include some “smart home” features — primarily devices that I could access, control, or monitor from my phone. Back in those days, Alexa wasn’t commonplace — if it existed at all — and Apple hadn’t come up with its HomeKit. It was a hodgepodge of options and I did a bunch of research before I decided on the Wink system.

My main criteria were:

  • I needed to have a generous number of device options that included light switches, motion sensors, and outlets.
  • I didn’t want to be tied into any monthly subscription plan.

Wink met this criteria. I could buy a Wink hub and then buy compatible — mostly Z-Wave and Zigbee — devices and add them to it. A free Wink app on my phone would give me access to these devices from anywhere I had an Internet connection.

To be fair, I went with other home automation products, too. A Ring doorbell to help monitor the outside of my home. LiftMaster wifi garage door openers that I could not only control but would notify me when one of my four garage doors opened. Various SmartCam and Tenvis security cameras. A Honeywell wifi thermostat so I could control heating and cooling, whether I was hopping on a flight home from a trip or too lazy to get out of bed. None of these products required a monthly fee for use. In fact, the reason I didn’t go with the Schlage keypad lock for my front door is because, at the time, they wanted a subscription fee and I wasn’t willing to pay it.

Wink never worked great, but it never worked badly enough to cause serious headaches or complaints. It was glitchy, period. Devices I added would sometimes be inaccessible or not behave the way I wanted them to. For example, my one Wink light bulb always defaulted to the ON condition after a power outage — not pleasant when the bulb is in the bedroom and the power outage happens at 1 AM. The hub would occasionally go offline for no particular reason. Sometimes, it would take several tries to pair up a new device.

I dealt with all this primary because I’m lazy and it worked good enough that I didn’t need to replace it. After all, it wasn’t as if I were paying for it on an ongoing basis. The hub was old — I’d never replaced it with the new model, no matter how hard Wink pushed me — but it worked good enough.

Wink Home Page
As this screen grab from the top of Wink’s home page says, you have to “Subscribe now to keep your service active.” Huh? Sell us a product and later ask us to pay to keep using it? No thanks.

Of course, all that changed about two weeks ago. Out of the blue, I got an email message from Wink telling me that they were going to a subscription model and that the hub would cease working on May 15 unless I subscribed. That was three days away. They later relented and, in an email message bragging about how many people had already signed up, said they’d delay until May 20.

I was pissed. I’d invested in their system and put up with its glitches for a long time. I certainly wasn’t interested in paying to continue using it.

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. There were plenty of Wink users bitching on Twitter — including me, of course — and lots of them were asking about alternatives. I suspected Wink’s email about their rush of subscribers was pure bull. Only an idiot would disregard his/her own thoughts and feelings to do what “the herd” was supposedly doing. I might be an idiot about some things, but I’m not an idiot about tech or my money.

I started doing research and realized that there were a lot more options out there now. The one that kept coming up as recommended was Samsung SmartThings. It didn’t require subscription fees and it was backed by the major electronics company that I already trusted to supply my new TV, sound bar, stove, dishwasher, washer, and dryer. I discovered that if I ordered on the Samsung site, I could save $10 and get free shipping. So I bought a new hub for $59 + tax and waited for it to arrive.

SmartThings Hub
The SmartThings hub is small can connect to my network via Ethernet or wirelessly.

May 20 came and went and the Wink hub’s light stayed blue. The SmartThings hub arrived on May 21. I spent the afternoon moving all the devices off Wink and onto SmartThings.

I won’t say it went like clockwork. I did need to call technical support at Samsung. A real person who spoke English as her first language and was not reading off a script answered within two minutes. She guided me through the process of “excluding” and then adding one of my GE smart light switches. I realized I’d missed a crucial step. I did another switch — this one the Levitron for my deck light (the first smart light switch I’d ever installed) — with her on the phone and didn’t need any help at all. Then I thanked her and let her go to help other former Wink users — she’d told me they’d been getting calls from Wink users all day. I did the rest of the devices by myself. Even the handful of switches that also work with HomeKit and Siri could be added; I’d never been able to get them to work quite right with Wink. The only ones I couldn’t switch over were the Wink brand lightbulb (duh) and the door sensors that were too old to be compatible. I was actually very surprised when I was able to connect my original motion sensor, although a warning in the SmartThings app told me that it was old tech and might not work right.

Oddly, one of the last messages I got from Wink in its app was assurance that they’d extended the deadline for subscribing and were re-evaluating their subscription program.

Too late. I made the switch. The Wink Hub’s blue light is no longer glowing (or blinking) over my kitchen. Instead, the SmartThings Hub’s much tinier form and green light is up there.

So far, I like it. I was easily able to set up my floodlights so they automatically go on when Ring detects motion outside my front door at night — and go off 15 minutes later. I don’t expect to have any problems setting up my light timers when I travel and don’t have a house sitter hanging out here. And I can still use Siri to turn on my out-of-reach Cocktails sign when it’s 5 PM somewhere.

And if I get really crazy someday and decide that I want Alexa to eavesdrop on my life so I can turn on a light without touching my phone — not likely, but who knows? — I can make the whole system voice activated via Alexa.

Thanks, Wink, for convincing me it was time to make the switch to a more modern, reliable, and cost-effective smart home system.