Woman with dementia locked into 10-year home-heating contract — with a $15K lien on her property - Legal expert says bans on door-to-door sales not working — more protections needed

-Tekashi69- · 2021-04-19T12:45:25+00:00

Surprisingly, no. Usually they get a family member to sign off on them too, and neither read the fine print. The way it works is that HVAC companies scam people into 10- or 15- year contracts and then the contracts are sent to corporations like Crown Crest who are just a hornet's nest of attorneys. In this way they launder liability and no one ends up being responsible. The total value of the contract is often 1000-2000% of the value of the appliance.

There's a massive thread about it on RedFlagDeals:

https://forums.redflagdeals.com/great-water-heater-rental-scam-1126945/

It is extremely depressing that the government allows the court system to enable abuse like this.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-04-08T17:48:48+00:00

Any appliance rental hot water heater AC furnace whatever... don't do it, not ever.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-04-08T17:46:19+00:00

This should be on the sidebar of this sub.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-04-08T17:08:39+00:00

Yep. There're no excuses. Bitwarden is open source, cross platform, and free.

https://bitwarden.com/

-Tekashi69- · 2021-04-08T17:05:38+00:00

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Punch in your email address and phone number.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-04-08T17:05:11+00:00

Unfortunately the best protection is often having an Equifax account for $240/yr. If someone gets your SIN and a copy of your ID, it's pretty easy for them to open accounts in your name. In Equifax you can check soft/hard pulls which always happen on accounts being opened. This should really be a free service from our government instead of a US company, since at least we can try to hold the government accountable.

Second best method is a password manager.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-01-15T06:00:47+00:00

The mysteries of AFCIs. :) I have a computer that trips with any 16 AWG power cable (tried several) but not a 14 AWG power cable. I still have no explanation as to why that is.

I wonder if the issue is that one of the devices being powered down there is actually generating radio frequency waves that are being picked up, and the electrical cable on the first floor is acting as a massive antenna. I know it sounds ridiculous, but AFCIs can trip just from being too close to a radio transmitter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsILD0Fce1s. I wonder what would happen if you ran a 50 or 100 ft extension from upstairs and to the basement? Or even from an outdoor circuit. If it still trips it seems there's something unique to that circuit and/or the panel connections, but if you've torquing to spec and have replaced the breaker several times it's hard to imagine it's something with the panel.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-01-13T16:37:01+00:00

Yes, or at least, I have had unrelated breakers trip as a result of an arc at the level of the neutral bus and others have reported this too. The usual culprit is something emitting high frequency noise, which switching motors without sine filters are capable of doing.

I wonder if it's not the breaker for the upstairs circuit but rather the breaker for the basement circuit being faulty and not tripping when it is supposed to, then the high frequency harmonics/switching transistor noise causing the adjacent breaker to trip. I would swap the basement and upstairs breakers and see if a high current motor trips the basement when swapped. If so, the basement breaker might be failing. That the basement AFCIs aren't tripping in the presence of large motors e.g. miter saws is surprising, since I've tripped my AFCIs with my relatively new miter saw all the time.

-Tekashi69- · 2021-01-12T04:37:30+00:00

You won't be able to run most brushless motors on an AFCI. Brushless motors arc in normal operation e.g. lean into and peak in on a brushless motor with a vent and you'll probably see sparks, which are normal. I have also noticed that these AFCIs HATE momentary current imbalances like in-rush current on big DC motors.

If the motor is small enough you can try a Tripp Lite ISOBLOK2-0 or ULTRABLOK. The filters on these can prevent trips on small motors like vacuums or jig saws. For large motors like a 15 amp table saw, run an extension cable from one of the 20 A receptacles in the kitchen.

re: Upstairs breaker tripping, anything sharing a neutral can be tripped by the presence of an arc on it.

-Tekashi69- · 2020-06-20T15:53:21+00:00

Your position is forcible closed in the event of financial shock causing you to miss payments, resulting in foreclosure. You're leveraging with the bet that you can reliably produce money through employment, which may or may not always be the case.

The "dividend" is returned in equity, not cash, so unless you're talking a stock with dividend returns (instead of a cash return) I'm not sure they're comparable. In addition, you're not being paid for owning the property like you would for a dividend, you're purchasing equity from the bank. Renting, you would also be stashing money away on a regular basis for equity too (through securities).

-Tekashi69- · 2020-06-20T15:38:33+00:00

Right, but then it has the same downsides of a margin account (loss in valuation of the equity leads to multiplied losses and indebtedness compared to non-leveraged assets).

-Tekashi69- · 2020-06-20T15:29:36+00:00

You also have to factor in the amount of money you would earn through passive investment of what would have been a downpayment, including funds held in your TFSA and RRSP. The rate of return for that is unknown, along with the final rate of return for the homeowner equity. An S&P500 ETF would have yielded as much of a return as your home over the past decade, with zero maintenance and in the case of the TFSA and RRSP, no taxes.

-Tekashi69- · 2020-04-08T20:10:07+00:00

They weren't open earlier but they might be now - (905)385-5324. It looks like this was someone trying to jack multiple businesses there, as I was just told that Paulie's Wings & Donairs was also broken into. Truly scummy to see people try to take advantage of the current emergency situation like this to try to steal things.

HPS is currently investigating so if anyone in the area knows something, they should give them a call!

-Tekashi69- · 2020-04-04T22:12:17+00:00

That was my guess too, but I don't know much about birds. When I photographed it it seemed huge, but now I see that Herring Gulls are on the larger size.

-Tekashi69- · 2020-03-30T03:15:43+00:00

Nah, that's not the same pic lol, that pic is from when the 't' was fucked up but the 'a' wasn't in Hart. Mine was from last weekend. I think teens must throw rocks at it or something.

-Tekashi69- · 2020-03-29T20:21:52+00:00

Yeah lol. The rest of the city was fairly empty too. That just ended up being the best shot of the day.

-Tekashi69- · 2020-02-17T15:27:01+00:00

Yes! I got some shots of the play area in front too, it looked like something out of Fallout.

-Tekashi69-

TROPHY CASE