Two things:

1)  I'm going to be in London for one day (December 3rd, I think) on an
extended layover on the way home.  It seems to me I keep seeing UK listers
talking about vouchers in some magazine to get MDs from someplace (Richer
Sounds?)for absurdly low prices like 49p or something.  Could a UK MDer
please tell me how I would take advantage of this offer?  Which magazine has
the ads?  Is the magazine available at most newsstands?  And is the store
easy to find (and close to a tube stop)?  Or have they stopped offering this
special deal?  Thanks in advance.

2)  Comments on extended warranties:  a couple of people have been asking
for advice on extended warranties on their MD products.  I don't know about
the Sony program, but I do know that most of the 3rd-party extended
warranties are a SCAM!  The reason the salesman is always eager to sell you
one of these warranties is because the salesman gets a large commission on
the policy -- typically 50%.  The store gets a cut, too.  So if your
extended warranty costs you $30, for example, the warranty provider is
probably receiving only $10 or $12 of that amount.  With that $10 or $12 per
policy, they are able to pay for warranty claims, print up their fancy
brochures, and pay their own salaries, while making a profit.  What does
that tell you about the value of the policy?  Check the fine print, too --
there are often deductibles, shipping and handling expenses, etc, that
substantially reduce the value of the policy, and the salesmen are
frequently misleading (their commission is at stake!)  I've had salesmen
tell me "oh, even if you forget the camcorder on the roof of your car and
drive off, you can come back, scoop up the pieces, put them in a box, and
ship it off to the warranty company", while the text of the policy clearly
states that they won't honor a claim if there are any obvious signs of
damage.  I figure that, by the time my MD (or cell phone, or VCR, or
camcorder, or digital camera, or...) breaks or wears out, that something
faster, smaller, cheaper, and all-around better will be available anyway.
Conventional wisdom dictates that, if a piece of consumer electronics dies,
it dies in the first day or week anyway, so the standard warranty should be
sufficient.

--Shane in Seattle

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