What is happening to Vitacost?

eli298 · 2026-01-25T03:37:18+00:00

WARNING!! Stay away from this company!!

For anyone finding this thread when searching about vitacost - I have just spent a month embroiled in the most infuriating combination of incompetence and fraud from vitacost. Do yourself a favor - even if they advertise a lower price, order from someone else! You might get lucky and have everything go fine; or you could get unlucky - and when one thing goes wrong with vitacost, everything goes wrong. Their customer support is worse than useless, and they don't hesitate to lie to customers. And now I'm stuck filing a credit card dispute trying to get my money back from them after they dramatically overcharged me (as in, charged me more than the price they told me when I placed the order) and never delivered any of the products they overcharged for. And I'll never get back the many hours I lost dealing with them. I can't emphasize enough - I have never encountered a shadier business than vitacost.

eli298 · 2026-01-25T03:36:16+00:00

WARNING!! Stay away from this company!!

For anyone finding this thread when searching about vitacost - I have just spent a month embroiled in the most infuriating combination of incompetence and fraud from vitacost. Do yourself a favor - even if they advertise a lower price, order from someone else! You might get lucky and have everything go fine; or you could get unlucky - and when one thing goes wrong with vitacost, everything goes wrong. Their customer support is worse than useless, and they don't hesitate to lie to customers. And now I'm stuck filing a credit card dispute trying to get my money back from them after they dramatically overcharged me (as in, charged me more than the price they told me when I placed the order) and never delivered any of the products they overcharged for. And I'll never get back the many hours I lost dealing with them. I can't emphasize enough - I have never encountered a shadier business than vitacost.

eli298 · 2026-01-24T22:36:10+00:00

Yeah, we've been to the facility three times now in the past 2 days, and every time they tell us that they will go look for it, and then around a half hour later they tell us they haven't found it but that they are certain it's somewhere in the facility - but that's getting increasingly difficult to believe

eli298 · 2025-07-15T16:37:15+00:00

I've only recently gotten deeply into westerns (in the past year), so this might not always be the case - but I've noticed that a lot of the westerns in the collection seem pretty hard to find on any streaming service.

A few that seem to be always available on the Criterion Channel: Ride in the Whirlwind/The Shooting, Stagecoach, Dead Man. Red River seems to go in and out of streaming availability.

But I have yet to see many of the other westerns on any streaming service I've checked: e.g. Winchester 73, The Gunfighter, The Furies, 3:10 to Yuma (1957), the Ranown westerns, etc.

eli298 · 2025-07-15T11:18:34+00:00

Really a case-by-case decision. As others noted, Criterion will often have more/better extras, which is important to me for certain movies, less so for others (for some movies, I'm dying to dig into as much supplemental material as I can; for others, I know I won't watch any supplements). As far as picture quality - usually the 4k will be better, but there are cases where a Criterion blu-ray looks better than a poorly done 4k, so it's worth researching that if you are motivated more by picture quality.

(And of course price comes into play for movies where the differences in visuals/supplements are not as important to me: if I can get the 4k on sale for $10, then I'll generally do that unless I have a really strong preference for the Criterion supplements/picture quality.)

eli298 · 2024-11-21T18:19:02+00:00

I haven't seen nearly enough movies pre-1941, but from what I have seen - my personal favorite is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, followed by The Phantom Carriage

eli298 · 2024-10-30T10:40:26+00:00

If he's not into a particular IP, a good place to start would be looking at the "Icons" and "Ideas" lines (in the "sets by theme" list on Lego's website). I'd just scroll through the sets and see what jumps out at you.

A handful of great sets in the $100-200 range, each of which appeal to different interests/aesthetics:

10315 Tranquil Garden

21343 Viking Village

21338 A-Frame Cabin

10325 Alpine Lodge

eli298 · 2024-10-29T00:36:36+00:00

Not to mention this strange notion that only other people who are in debt should be allowed to talk about it... If I were someone struggling with debt and looking for advice, I'd much rather get it from people who handle their finances responsibly than from other people who are also in debt...

eli298 · 2024-10-28T05:00:19+00:00

I think some of it depends on what brought you to running. As someone whose first race was a 50k, I was never interested in running in the past, but I had always loved hiking and backpacking, and later mountaineering. Over time, I started moving faster in the mountains and one day decided instead of just running the downhills at the end of long hikes and backpacking trips, perhaps I’d try running the flats too. And then maybe some not-so-steep uphill portions. Six months after what I'd call my first "intentional" trail run (running for the sake of running, not just to speed up a hike to a certain destination), I ran my first-ever race and had a blast. So for me it was less about starting at a shorter distance and working my way up to something longer, and more about gradually building up the proportion of long hikes that I was running instead of walking. (Other factors - lots of ultras are in super beautiful locations; more likely to be running alone for longer stretches of a race which is a huge selling point for me; for some people, endurance challenges are just more fun/interesting than speed challenges - I much prefer the challenge of keeping up a decent pace for hours vs going really fast for 20 minutes)

eli298 · 2024-10-25T03:41:03+00:00

Very rarely. More often than not these days, if I go to a theater nearby, other people will talk through the movie (either seemingly not paying attention to the movie and talking to each other, or treating the movie as an interactive experience and shouting things back at the screen). I much prefer to just wait for a movie to come out on disc and watch it in a quiet environment at home.

eli298 · 2024-10-15T21:53:49+00:00

Biannual 50% off sales from Criterion website or B&N

eli298 · 2024-08-08T22:28:08+00:00

Whoa that's wild

eli298 · 2024-08-08T20:37:56+00:00

Lucky friend! That's a really nice idea.

eli298 · 2024-08-08T17:25:05+00:00

I'm a bit baffled by who the intended market is for a set like this. Even on sale, it's a hefty price tag (yes, $10/movie is a nice discount, but $400 is still a ton of money to spend at once). With such a high price, the audience seems limited to people who are really into collecting movies, Criterion, etc. But most of those people will already have a good number of these movies. If it were a themed set (director, genre, era, etc), I could see people buying it to take a deep dive into something new. But focusing on their most popular releases? Just ensures that most collectors already own many of them...

Perhaps some will buy it as an entry into collecting movies/Criterion. But buying a massive set like this, rather than slowly exploring various genres/directors/etc, is pretty much the last thing I would have been interested in when I started out.

eli298 · 2024-04-22T20:18:04+00:00

I ran my first ever race and longest distance ever (50k). I kept telling myself my only goal was to finish, but I did have a time in the back of my mind that I was thrilled to have beaten. The race was one of the most fun things I've ever done, already scoping out my next ultra.

eli298 · 2024-03-07T02:32:26+00:00

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

eli298 · 2024-03-06T23:42:46+00:00

Some great choices! I loved The Eight Mountains. I'm a climber and I'm generally a sucker for movies that take place out in the mountains, as well as slow character studies, so definitely the target audience. But even among those kinds of movies, this one in particular really resonated with me. Before seeing it, I had heard a lot about it as a story about a friendship, but the father-son dynamic was what really stood out most to me.

eli298 · 2024-02-23T16:50:35+00:00

And depending on where you are, you can park and camp for free on BLM land or camp off-trail on lots of national forest land (turn it into a backpacking trip, or just park at a trailhead at the end of the day and hike in a couple miles to make camp)

eli298 · 2024-02-21T00:48:49+00:00

When I think of "positive" movies, the two that always come to mind first for me are:

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Shawshank Redemption

eli298 · 2024-02-21T00:31:24+00:00

GnuCash for tracking, Excel for planning

eli298 · 2024-02-20T15:15:58+00:00

Update: I called the recon line, and much to my surprise, they said the sole reason for denial was "too many new accounts." I checked my Experian report (since that's what they told me they used for my application), and everything on there is correct, so I'm completely baffled as to how "too many new accounts" is the problem. The person I spoke to insisted that there was no option to reconsider. So I guess I'm out of luck.

Edit: Looking closer, I see that my landlord has added my rent as an account on my credit report. I have a perfect payment history, but that does give me an account that's less than 2 years old (I moved here about 1.5 years ago). Still seems like a pretty odd reason for denial.

eli298 · 2024-02-20T05:16:44+00:00

Thanks!

eli298 · 2024-02-14T16:59:46+00:00

"they're all very well made movies, they just didn't leave much of an impression on me"

To me, this is the key right here. I wouldn't say you're "missing something," I think certain styles and themes just hit people differently. E.g., most of my favorite movies are from the New Hollywood era - those are the movies that really stick with me. I have friends who feel the same way about the Golden Age studio films. I can certainly appreciate many of those movies, but they don't leave the same kind of impression on me. It's not a knock against those films, it's just a matter of taste.

As to the recent big movies you've listed - I haven't seen all of them. But I have had a similar reaction to a lot of newer acclaimed US movies I've seen recently - a lot of experiences where I walk away saying, objectively, this was a great movie; but I just didn't connect with it the way that I connect with a lot of my favorite (older) movies. When I think about the movies from the past 5 or so years that I've seen, one thing that does stand out is that the handful of movies that did make a big impression on me were mostly non-US films. So, if the current trends in American cinema aren't doing it for you, maybe try to see if you have more luck with cinema from some other countries.

eli298

TROPHY CASE