If your planning to give Vanilla VISA gift cards this Christmas, watch out! There's a little catch you should know about.

First the cards cost $3.95 to get. So a $50 gift card will cost you $53.95. Not too bad, but if they are a tech user aren't you better off getting a BestBuy, Apple or Circuit City card? IF they like clothes, you could give them a LLBean, Nordstroms, or Timberland gift card. You'll save $3.95, and they still will have the $50 gift card to spend.

The second catch, and this is a biggie, after a year, Vanilla VISA will charge $1.50 a month if you still have a balance on the card. Make sure that you educate whoever that you give the card to that they use it up right away! If you have one from last Christmas, goto Vanilla VISA website right now and check the balance. If you have anything left over, you could always goto the gas station and fill up. Note: You won't be able to pay at the pump, go inside and tell them how much you have left.

So, with the two "catches" above, are you really better off using a VISA gift card? Why not just give them cash? A $50 bill will generate the same reaction as getting a $50 gift card.

If you call to cancel your AOL account, the "member representative" will not offer you a refund for the current month. This is very bad customer service! So instead of customers leaving som what happy, they are even angrier than before.

According to this page, the following explains how AOL charges its members:

CHARGES, BILLING AND THE FREE TRIAL
AOL reserves the right to change our fees or billing methods at any time and AOL will provide notice of any such change at least thirty days in advance in the same manner described above for changes to the Member Agreement. AOL also has the right to collect applicable taxes and impose premium surcharges for some areas of the service and these surcharges may apply even during your free trial. The answers to many common billing questions can be found by going to Keyword: Help, then selecting Accounts & Billing, going to Keyword: Billing, or by contacting an AOL customer service representative at 1-800-827-6364. If you don't like the changes in fees or billing methods, you may cancel your membership at any time, but AOL will not refund any remaining portion of the monthly fee when you cancel your membership. If you have joined AOL as a trial member, you should understand that your free trial time must be used within one month of your initial sign-on and to avoid being charged a membership fee, you must cancel your account before the end of that first month.

If you are not satisfied with the AOL membership representative response, do what I did, write a letter to AOL! I wrote them a nice business letter complaining about their service and demanded a refund. This is the address that I sent my letter, I also sent a copy of the letter to my credit card company:

AOL
22070 Broderick Dr
Sterling, VA 20166

Make sure that you request a refund in your letter! Don't just vent about the customer service!

Its the Christmas Season..

In the Boston Area, its all about the Malls... Northshore Mall, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Square One Shopping Centre, Emerald Square, Burlington Mall, South Shore Plaza, Holyoke Mall at Ingleside, Independence Mall, Natick Mall, Shopper's World and the Cape Cod Mall.

There are some New England stores that are tradditional stores customers like to visit every year: Bob's Stores, Building 19, Christmas Tree Shops, Concord's Hand Design, LL Bean, Ocean State Job Lot, Paper Store, Spags, Zeb's Country Store, Yankee Candle, and the Vermont Country Store.

Here are some of my favorite shopping areas of New England:

Cape Cod Mall

Cambridge Side Galleria

LL Bean

Christmas Tree Shops

Vermont Country Store

• Woot
• Maczot
• MacUpdate Promo

Each of these sites offer some type of one day discount. The Woot offers anything imaginable, where as the other sites offer specific software deals for MacUsers.

• SideNote - Freeware Notetaking tool, always available.
• Growl - Displays Popup information, such as when email arrived or file download completed.
• TextMate - Best Text Tool!

This morning I ordered some more CShells storage containers from BuyCShells.com. I first ordered from them back in 2000, and again in 2001 and 2003. Its one of the few small vendors that I have place multiple orders.

CShells are great for long term storage, and I think they are the best solution for keeping CDs and DVDs in laptop bags. Its so easy to slip one in the bag and not have to worry about something falling into it, which usually happens when I use the paper sleeves.

If you use CD/DVD Paper Sleeves, or the Tyvek versions you should look into CShells. Its a better solution because the disks are well protected from whatever elements that you may run into.

Another advantage of CShells is that you can see the entire Disc label. Using a CD/DVD Paper Sleeve you only see part of the label.