Internet Essentials $9.99 per month cable internet is available in Boston

My family and I signed up for Internet Essentials a few months ago, and so far we are quite happy with it.

The signup process was a bit ridiculous; I had to call and speak to someone for a screening to determine I was eligible, then they said they would mail me a contract to send back. First they sent me a Comcast bill for $0.00 and a bunch of pages of fine print, which I thought was the contract but wasn’t sure how to fill it out or send it back. I called and talked to someone and they said that wasn’t the contract, and the contract takes 7-10 business days to arrive, which 1) is kind of ridiculous 2) had already elapsed. They said they could resend it by mail or e-mail, and that e-mail would take 3-5 business days (WTF?), and that doing either would invalidate the first one because it would be a new copy with new numbers on it. Wow, and they’re not even a government agency. So I waited a couple more days for the mailed contract to arrive, which it did. I had the option of mailing or faxing it back, and fortunately, I’m one of the approximately six individuals in the United States who faxes things. After faxing it back, I had to wait 3-5 business days and then call them. To see if they got the fax. Right. I did, they did, and they UPSed me the Comcast setup kit with the modem and everything in a couple of days.

I discovered I didn’t have cable coming into my unit, so I called and arranged to have it installed. The installation scheduling was done through the general Comcast office rather than part of Internet Essentials specifically, so the customer service was standard-issue crappy customer service instead of holy-ridiculous-poor-people customer service, and they sent someone out the next morning. They quoted me $50 for the install, which was fine with me since I would be saving immensely on internet. They ended up refunding the $50 charge, noting it was “charged in error,” which I assume means Internet Essentials customers aren’t meant to pay it. Once it was installed, I set it up with no problem using the pamphlet that shipped with the modem.

The service is slower than many of the Comcast packages (5 Mbps), but it’s certainly sufficient for our purposes and is fast enough for watching Hulu, streaming Pandora, downloading things, and so forth without any issues. Eligibility requires proof that your child is enrolled in school or is homeschooled and is eligible for free lunch. I don’t know how they determine this if the local school provides universal free lunch as ours does. They did say that proof of Food Stamps eligibility works for homeschool or private school students. They also have computers available for $149.99, though they don’t say what kind and I couldn’t readily find anything doing a cursory google search. Naturally, they’ve done some serious SEO, so everything that comes up is press releases and official information, not, say, bloggers saying what kind of computer they got.

Eastern Bank likes to give me free money

I have a personal checking account with Eastern Bank that I haven’t used in years. It has no fees, unless I let it go more than six months with no activity, which I’ve taken care of by setting up an automatic transfer of a dollar into it every month from the online checking account I use regularly.

About once or twice a year, Eastern Bank e-mails me a promotion that says they’ll give me $20 if I pay two bills using their bill payment service. So I transfer some money into that account and pay whichever two bills are due next, and a month later or so they give me free money. Pretty sweet deal for doing nothing.

Who the hell faxes anything anymore?

I used to ask myself this, and still do from time to time, but the reality is that most of the medical and social services world still thinks it’s 1991 and uses faxes for everything. Many of these places are even using paper fax machines hooked up to phone lines. The reason for much of this is that HIPAA, FERPA, and all those other privacy-related acronyms pretty much say nothing about privacy precautions for faxing (or, say, sending medical records via first-class mail with no signature or tracking!) but require extensive precautions to transmit data via e-mail or cloud storage the way most of us do. Most places don’t have the IT capacity or the funds to revamp their entire system to use encrypted e-mail or cloud systems, so they’re stuck using fax and postal mail.

While I don’t work in community service or a medical setting, I now have to deal with these places several times per week between being a foster parent, having a child with multiple disabilities, and participating in a number of community programs to get services for this child and to make ends meet for my family. This means that at least once a week, I need to fax something because the place doesn’t accept it via e-mail. (Or I could take it there personally, or mail it and hope it gets to the right person, but that ends up being more trouble than it’s worth.)

This means I am now the (proud?) owner of a fax number. Fortunately, I don’t have some yellowing plastic paper-jam-ridden machine attached to my nonexistent landline. I’ve been using sFax, and the $9 a month is totally worth it. It’s actually $7.20 per month with one of these 20% off codes that they keep sending me, and sometimes less if you pass the codes along to friends. Yes, you heard me, I actually found a fax-number pyramid scheme; the internet really does have a sketchy multi-level-marketing deal for everything!

The service however is not at all sketchy, and actually is quite impressive. They have a free iPhone app that lets you fax things from your iPhone (it even works on my ancient crank-operated 1929-model iPhone). It’s been incredibly time-saving to just snap a cameraphone picture of whatever I need to send somewhere and fax it off. No one so far has noticed or cared that I’m sending phone pictures of documents; I mean, really, you’ve seen some of the crooked, mangled faxes that doctor’s offices send, right? That’s the other weird thing about faxes; for whatever reason the medical and social services culture considers a faxed document to be an “original.” Hey, works for me.

National Grid offers discounted gas rate for low-income customers

The hardest part of applying for the discount rate for National Grid was finding the stupid form, but it was easy once I did that. They require proof of participation in an income-based program and the form must be mailed.

NStar provides a discounted rate for low-income customers

NStar provides a pretty substantial discount to customers who participate in a number of programs. The form is straightforward but needs to be mailed or faxed with copies of documents verifying eligibility for an income-based program. Our discount showed up on our bill within about a month and part of it was retroactive. Now our electric bill is about $22 per month instead of $35 per month (1000-square-foot home, gas heat, no A/C, no televisions, all light bulbs are energy efficient).

Free Museum of Science admission for EBT and WIC cardholders

The Museum of Science is quickly becoming one of our family’s favorite places to visit, now that they are offering free admission for WIC or EBT card holders. They allow up to four people per card, so if your family has both cards, that’s — wait for it — eight people who can get in for free. We’ve been using this as a way to entertain out-of-town guests.

If you aren’t receiving SNAP (food stamps), check out my post on why it’s worth it to apply even if you feel like you’re doing fine putting food on the table or don’t think you’d qualify for very much per month.

Swagbucks: website that gives you free Amazon gift cards

Swagbucks is a pretty cool way to get some extra spending money. I’ve been using the Amazon gift cards to get mostly kid things; they have some really good deals on usually-expensive things like Kamik boots.

So, Swagbucks is basically a pyramid scheme, to be honest. It’s not the illegal kind though, because you can still earn without having referred anyone. The easiest way to get Swagbucks though is to have other people sign up through your page. I’ve seen people on various work-from-home forums mention that they got hundreds of dollars of referrals by printing up free business cards (using one of the free trial offers that earns you Swagbucks!) with their referral link and leaving them in the laundromat and other places where people are looking for, ahem, get-rich-quick schemes. I haven’t gone that far, but have done nicely by giving some referral links to friends. So, hey, if you don’t have Swagbucks yet, sign up using my account and help my family buy school clothes while earning some gift cards to get some for your own family.

Once you get to the site, you can earn Swagbucks by using their search engine, buying things through their referral links, signing up for things, and various other ways. There’s a coupon engine that uses coupons.com  but earns you Swagbucks for every coupon you redeem, which is pretty cool. Like any sort of reward-for-buying-stuff program, you can earn if you use it only to buy things you can afford and were going to buy already, but can easily get sucked in if you aren’t careful. One Swagbuck is equal to 1.11 cents (450 Swagbucks = $5 on Amazon), so if you buy something that costs $10 in order to get 100 Swagbucks, you’re an idiot. If you had planned to buy the thing anyway though, you might as well get some free money in the process.

Oh, and it goes without saying that if you’re signing up for car insurance quotes and whatnot through Swagbucks or any of these sites, for god’s sake, use one web browser for all of this slightly sketchy web browsing and another one for your normal browsing, like logging into your bank’s web site. And of course get a throwaway e-mail address for all the spam you’re going to be receiving. Swagbucks is pretty reputable and I’ve not known anyone to have anything happen to them other than receiving a lot of spam when they sign up for offers, but still, I’d be cautious and have anything this gimmicky be in a separate browser where it can’t possibly track my important personal info.

Subsidized Hubway membership: easy to get, easy to use

I signed up for a subsidized Hubway membership last week. It was surprisingly hassle-free; I just called the number, spoke to a very helpful associate, and was e-mailed a code to enter into the Hubway site that changed the yearly fee from $85 to $5. A free helmet arrived in the mail a few days later. The person on the phone didn’t need me to send in any verification that we receive low-income benefits, which was surprising. Also interesting to note: the subsidized memberships are free for up to an hour, whereas the full-price membership starts charging you after a 30-minute trip.

Using the bikes is pretty fun. There are stations at a number of the subway stops and at major intersections that aren’t served by the trains. It’s cheaper and more fun than taking the train if you’re just going a few stops, and it’s certainly faster than waiting for buses or walking to get to areas that aren’t near a train line.

The only downside is that there’s no way to take kids along with you. The bike is basically a standard cruiser setup, so I suppose one could attach a trailer or child seat if it’s the type that attaches only to the seatpost. A trailer/trail-behind might be easier because it could be locked to a bike rack once you get to your destination, whereas a child seat would have to be carried around. I couldn’t find anything saying attaching things to the Hubway bikes is prohibited, but I think I’ll wait and see if any of the car-free or cycling bloggers try it and report back before I give it a try. It would be really cool if Hubway eventually rolled out some bikes with child seats or trailers so users could carry small passengers. Tandems would be cool too for older kids or for adult reluctant cyclists, and would be a way to relax the rule that all riders must be at least 16.

Class action suits for fun and profit

You know those ads on daytime television looking for people who’ve been harmed by some drug or product? Because Americans just really like to sue each other? Sure, I appreciate living in a free country and having a less-corrupt-than-many-other-countries justice system available for times when someone is truly harmed by the actions of another.

Apparently though, we also have a justice system and a culture in which someone will sue Kellogg claiming they were duped by Mini-Wheats advertising and led to believe these little hay bales would make their children smarter. And the person suing Kellogg can actually win such a suit, or at least convince Kellogg to settle.

What does this mean for us little people, other than being funny and slightly disturbing? Well, the sue-happy person suffering from post-mini-wheat trauma disorder decided to pursue this as a class action suit instead of just a standard lawsuit. This means that anyone who opts into the class of people who were misled and traumatized by Kellogg’s Mini Wheats can receive a check in the mail for $5-$45 depending how many boxes s/he purchased and how many people opt in to the settlement.

This site and this one both contain dozens of these class action lawsuits. Obviously for the suits that will pay thousands of dollars to people whose Porsche was defective, the claimant has to provide proof of purchase. But for the ones that pay between $1 and $50 to people who purchased Naked juice or L’Oréal hair products, the claimant just has to swear to having actually made a purchase under penalty of perjury.

I’m planning on going on the site every month or so and finding products I’ve purchased. Honestly, I don’t have any problem with getting some cereal refunds from a company that makes millions of dollars per year.

Food stamps can get you more than just food

If you aren’t receiving food stamps, check out the massresources.org eligibility screener. Depending on housing costs and a few other variables, your family income can be up to about $35,000 a year for a family of three and you’ll qualify for a few dollars in food stamps. It’s worth applying if you think you’ll be eligible for anything whatsoever though, because once you have food stamps, you’re considered to be “receiving public assistance” and can get a number of other helpful benefits and services.