It appears amazon just ended their 30 day price drop refund policy. From an email I just got in response to a request for a $5.00 refund:

Only orders placed before September 1, 2008 are eligible for a price difference refund under the Post-Order Price Guarantee policy. As of September 1, 2008 we are no longer offering discounts if prices change on our website after you make a purchase.

Work, Then Party

Hell yeah, I'm $300 richer today than I was yesterday. Time to go to Wal-Mart!

But don't get me wrong, if they're giving money away...

Link, via.

For those of you who frequent Amazon.com for everything from books to food... Are you aware of Amazon's 30-day price drop refund policy? Buy something today, and if the price drops in the next month, you can get a refund for the difference. But the catch is that you have to request the refund. Who knew? I sure didn't.

To make the job of discovering such refund opportunities, there's the PriceDrop Firefox plugin. You can also use it to track those looking-for-a-bargain items.

I ran a few errands earlier today and decided out of laziness and hunger to drive rather than bike. (When I got out and realized how effin beautiful the weather was, I promised myself I would go for a couple hours-long ride this evening.) I needed to fill up my gas tank, and damn! gas is back up to ~$3/gal ($2.979 where I stopped). When did that happen, I wondered. I looked at my most recent receipt, and it had been five days short of two months (and $0.32/gal) since I last bought gas. That must be a new record for me. I spent $27 for a tank full, also a new record. Eh, no worries—still less than the cost of a cup of coffee per day, right?

Anyway, I started thinking about the price of gas and gas tax rates and the don't-blame-us-blame-the-dadgum-guvment gas pump stickers that show the state and federal tax rates. So for the last couple of hours I've gotten my geek on and researched the history of gas prices and tax rates over the past few decades.

(Lots of numbers and graphs below...)