Sega charges $5 more for Sonic on the Wii

Sega recently made a new Sonic game, Sonic 4 which was released on the Apple iPhone Oct 7th and on the Nintendo Wii Oct Oct 11. You will see from the two screen shots below that the iPhone version is $9.99 whilst the Wii version is $15 (1500 points = $15).



It's bad enough that Sega neglected the Wii when they released Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the Xbox 360 and PS3 only, but now they are also overcharging Wii users for the same game they could get for $5 less on their iPhone or iPod touch?

I don't see the point in paying an extra $5 when you don't need to, which makes the iPhone version a better way to go if you want to play the latest edition to the Sonic games.

The manipulative Cablevision is at it again!

I don't mind that much that Cablevision doesn't support full HD, but now they have gone too far. Cablevision used to offer basic cable to those that did not have a cable box as a way to accommodate those that really couldn't afford a box (around $6 per month to rent one), but that all changed several years ago.

Many of the channels you used to be able to get without a cable box were cut in half, it went from over 40 channels down to a small handful. However now, you can't get any channels. They are manipulating customers to rent additional cable boxes to be able to watch even the most basic channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) - channels you could watch for free over the air with an antenna.

I have two cable boxes in my home, and five televisions. That means that now three of those televisions are useless unless I pay an extra $18 per month to rent three additional boxes. However even at $6-$7 a month just for one box for an elderly person on a fixed income, that would mean the difference between paying for cable or never watching TV again. Some people live in areas that get bad antenna reception, and are forced to use cable just so they can watch the evening news!

How much longer will we as the customers allows such manipulative companies to stay in business? I think we should all boycott Cablevision until they give us back our channels!

Barnes & Noble - unethical false advertising

On June 25th, I downloaded and installed the "B&N eReader" by Barnes & Noble, mainly because their advertisement promised "Five free classic eBooks" and "Free copy of Merriam-Webster's Pocket Dictionary" when you create an account via this app. With other eReader apps for the iPhone (Kindle and iBooks) I have no need for yet another, I view this as a way for Barnes & Noble to ensure people will download their app in hopes of selling more books from their store.

This however is false advertising, as they do not honor the "Five Free classic eBooks" offer, nor do they honor the free Merriam-Webster offer. What you do get is Three free books and two samples, which they then ask you to pay $9.99 for. Not only did they lie, when I called them up they refused to compensate me for my time in both calling them and downloading their eReader app. As I noted in the last paragraph here the B&N app is horrible in comparison to the Kindle or the iBooks app.

Below are screen shots of their unethical false advertising, and a video I took of the phone conversation.





This is a classic case of "bait and switch." They offered the 5 books just long enough to get passed by Apple's approval team for apps. Then they changed it to only 3 books but didn't change the description. Which seems like their intent from the start. They found a way to trick Apple into thinking their description was the truth (because one of the reasons Apple rejects apps is because the description is different from what the app actually does).

Barnes & Nobel cheated me, they cheated Apple, and they cheated you!