The trick is simple. Figure out what the total cost is and then buy gift certificates on your different cards, e-mail them to yourself, and use them to purchase the item. This is a little easier to organize if you leave a little slack for the final card. Then you don’t have to get it right down to the penny. It’s also easier if you’re able to use supersaver shipping and live in a state where Amazon doesn’t collect sales tax, so you don’t have to figure that into your calculation.

I was in probably the most complicated scenario. I had a American Express gift card that can’t be used to buy Amazon gift certificates (some American Express rule I think) and since Amazon applies the full value of the gift certificate before charging the card, I had to get the number right down to the penny. Furthermore I live in New York for which Amazon collects taxes, and there was a shipping charge. So I went all the way to final checkout page to get my total, but did not place the order. I went back to the home page and bought my gift certificates. When they arrived I checked out again and applied the gift certificates. (I actually could have done this with one gift certificate but I got the numbers wrong the first time and had to do it over.)

Final result: gift card balance zero, and one new Canon EF12 II extension tube, Sandisk Extreme Firewire Card Reader, and Sandisk 32GB CompactFlash extreme card. Who knows? If enough folks click on the Amazon ads below, that combined with the $0.98 I saved, will actually have paid for the time I spent getting this precisely right. Who said humans were rational consumers? :-)

They say they want this for security, but I call bullshit on that. The real problem is that Chase’s system doesn’t allow the e-mail addresses that WAMU used for its usernames. Rather than upgrade their systems, they decided to inconvenience millions of customers.

And on top of that, the form doesn’t actually work. As I type this, it’s been “Transferring data from online.wamu.com….” for many minutes. And the final result?

The connection has timed out

The server at online.wamu.com is taking too long to respond.

• The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
  moments.
• If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer’s network
  connection.
• If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
  that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Sadly, I can’t think of a single local bank that’s likely to do better than this.

Fortunately, WAMU is not my main account (that’s still in New York at Amalgamated.) so this is just a minor inconvenience. I am glad I didn’t deposit the check for my last article yet. Fortuitously, I’d accidentally written a bunch of checks on my WAMU account instead of my New York account recently. I narrowly avoided bouncing the rent, but it does mean I had relatively little money (less than a $1000 I think) in the account at the moment.

If they lie about something this trivial, what else are they lying about? If they can’t even get a basic check order right, do I really want to trust them with my money?

On top of that, WAMU doesn’t support Quicken for the Mac (again, despite telling me they did). Time to look for a new bank.

I had considered various online brokers, but there weren’t as many choices as I expected. Scotttrade seemed to have the best combination of low fees and decent user interface. Internet gossip about them was relatively positive compared to what was said about other online brokerages. The kicker was the local offices where I could drop off paperwork and get immediate feedback instead of having to mail forms back and forth for a few weeks. USAA was a close second. If Scotttrade doesn’t work out, I may switch to them.

The transfer itself is supposed to take 7-10 business days. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ll need to make a test trade to make sure it all works once the money and equities are shifted over. There’s nothing in my portfolio I want to sell right now. I guess I’ll have to buy something. Anyone have a hot tip?

So here I am manually entering all my mutual fund statements one more time. Word of warning: if you have more than a couple of mutual funds held outside of brokerage accounts, Quicken is not for you. I wonder if Microsoft Money can do this? or GnuCash?

You see, when I sign up for a new service, I often give out a custom e-mail address just for that service. Today I noticed that some (not all) of the image spam is coming to my Ameritrade custom address. There’s a small chance that the spammers just guessed that address, but it’s much more likely that Ameritrade sold my address to them, directly or indirectly.

I guess it’s time to start looking for a new online broker. Any suggestions for a reliable, cheap, non-spamming broker?

To use it you’ll need a Citibank credit card (not hard to get. They’d probably give one to my cat if I asked).

There’s a desktop client for Windows, but Mac and Linux users will have to use the web interface. You’ll need to allow popups for this to work. First login at https://www.accountonline.com/. Then you should see “Virtual Account Numbers” toward the top right of the page. Click it.

You’ll then be asked to agree to some terms and conditions. There doesn’t appear to be anything too onerous in there, just the usual verbiage designed to make more work for lawyers. If you signed up for the credit card in the first place, you’ve already agreed to worse than this.

Once you’ve agreed to the terms, a little Flash app loads in a pop up window. You’ll have to enter your username and password again. Then you can generate virtual account numbers, view the existing numbers, or look over the transaction history:

When you generate the account number, the window will show all the details you need to make a single online credit card purchase: name, account number, expiration date, and CVC code.

I’m reconfiguring my office, and moving equipment around, so I experimented by using this virtual account number to order some Liberator power strip extenders from Cyberguys, a company I’ve never shopped with before. The transaction appeared to go through without a hitch. The order status currently shows “Awaiting CC Auth” though. We’ll see if it arrives.

It occurred to me that I really ought to try buying two things to see if this really works like it’s supposed to, so next I went to ThinkGeek and bought a PowerSquid using the same virtual account number. Wait a minute. That wasn’t supposed to happen! The number was supposed to be good for one time use only!

My guess is that ThinkGeek isn’t actually waiting to authorize the payment before showing me the confirmation screen. Either that, or Cyberguys didn’t authorize their payment fast enough and ThinkGeek got their first. (Luckily I need a PowerSquid too.)

OK. Cyberguys just e-mailed me to tell me “We have been unable to obtain an authorization for the credit card number used for this purchase.” ThinkGeek still shows their order as Processing. I’m guessing ThinkGeek’s credit card authorization runs a little faster than Cyberguys, so they logged the sale even though I ordered from Cyberguys first.

Of course, I probably shouldn’t have used the number for two stores in the first place. However this does point up a security hole. An attacker who grabs the credit card number might still be able to use it before it’s used for its intended purpose. The virtual account number reduces the window of vulnerability, but doesn’t close it completely.

The whole process is too complicated to use routinely. Possibly the standalone Windows program is simpler. For sites I shop at regularly like Amazon and Fresh-Direct, I’ll just continue to use my real credit card number. However, for sites I may only shop at once, and where I’m not sure if I fully trust them, as well as for sites that want to bill me monthly even if I only need to use it once, this makes a lot of sense. I hope other credit card companies will follow suit.

Maybe it’s just a fluke, and I only took note because it happened to me so close together in time; but maybe it’s an increasing problem as more pricing gets automated without effective checks and balances; and just maybe it’s not a mistake at all but a deliberate and dishonest way to raise prices.

At least the boots had a clearly marked price tag I could point to at the cash register. However the bourbon was particularly insidious. If I hadn’t carefully compared and thought about all nine different bourbons and their proofs and prices at the start of the meal (yes, I’m a bit of a bourbon nut) I wouldn’t have noticed the pricing error at the end. Even then, I had to ask for the bar menu again to check my recollection.

Supermarkets are notorious for charging different prices at the register than you find on store shelves. I’d hate to see this nefarious practice spreading, but it may be inevitable as automated payment systems, debit cards, and scanners make it easier than ever to hide what yolu’re really paying.

Airlines calculate the cost of each frequent flier mile as approximately 1.5 cents. You can buy miles (up to about 15000 miles per year for airline) for less than 3 cents per mile. Given the difficulty of redeeming miles as well as the likelihood the miles will expire or the airline go bankrupt before I use them, I generally round the value of a mile down to one penny per mile. When applying for such a card, keep these numbers in mind.

For instance, 15,000 miles is just barely worth it if the annual fee is $135 per year. Most cards offer no annual fee for the first year, so you can do better if you simply refuse to renew each card, and instead apply for a new card a month later. This also provides some additional protection from having your card number stolen, and from unscrupulous vendors and sites that automatically renew subscriptions for goods and services with or without permission. (I normally subscribe to a lot of onetime use sites in the last month of each card.)

All this applies only if you pay your balance in full each month. Interest rates on these cards are so high that if you keep any balance at all, you’d be better off using a low interest card from your credit union and just buying your airline tickets with the money you save.