Family Guy Box Set, Volume 1 – $1.88
Family Guy Box Set, Volume 2 – $1.25
Family Guy Box Set, Volume 3 – $1.88
Family Guy – The Stewie Griffin Story – $1.25
The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring Box Set Extended Edition, Standard Definition – $6.26
The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers Box Set Extended Edition, Standard Definition – $3.75
The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King Box Set Extended Edition, Standard Definition – $3.75

In addition to the dollar amounts noted above, I also received $4.01 in bonus store credit for choosing store credit over cash. In total, those DVD box sets brought me $20.02 in store credit to use at F.Y.E. Overall, not so bad.

Thanks again, F.Y.E.!

And so we have Round Three of trading in my old, dusty DVDs to F.Y.E. for store credit!

Amid the happiness that I feel about turning old, dusty DVDs into a functional asset (store credit) I have to admit that there’s something unsettling about the process of trading in these DVDs. I’m not sure what it is – it could be the fact that I’m receiving back in store credit only a fraction of what these DVDs originally cost me (and a small fraction, by the way). I don’t know what it is, but that unsettling feeling is more than squelched by the dual fact that I have less unused/not-going-to-be-used stuff laying around my bedroom and that, in return for getting rid of this stuff, I have a new functional asset in F.Y.E. store credit.

So how much did I earn in store credit for trading in all of these DVDs? Take a look at the list below and find out for yourself!

Ducktales Season 1 – $6.25
Smallville Season 1 – $3.75
Smallville Season 4 – $2.50
Smallville Season 5 – $5.00
Smallville Season 6 – $2.50
Smallville Season 7 – $10.00
American History X – $1.88
Beetlejuice – $2.50
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (new one) – $1.25
Creep Show – $1.25
Dane Cook: Harmful if Swallowed – $2.50
Great Outdoors – $1.25
Killer Klowns from Outer Space – $1.88
Lewis Black: Black on Broadway – $2.50
Lewis Black: Unleashed – $1.25
Life – $1.25
Masters of the Universe – $3.75
Meet the Fockers – $1.25
Meet the Parents – $1.88
My Cousin Vinny – $2.50
Office Space – $2.50
Robots – $1.25
Rudy – $1.25
Shrek – $1.25
Shrek 2 – $0.63
The Addams Family 1 – $1.25
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad – $1.88
The Passion of the Christ – $2.50
The Simpsons: Gone Wild – $1.88
The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror – $1.25
True Lies – $1.25
Wedding Crashers – $1.25
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (old one) – $2.50

I think that part of the unsettling feeling is seeing an entire season of the Smallville television series bringing in $2.50. I mean… good grief! Two dollars and fifty cents?! I probably paid $25 for that box set when it was released for goodness’ sake! Geez…

Anyway, in total I generated $77.53 in store credit from Round Three of my DVD trade-ins this year. As you might recall from Round One and Round Two, I’ve been trading in my old, dusty DVDs throughout 2010. In total, this year I generated $244.22 in store credit at F.Y.E. by trading in some of these unused old DVDs that were doing nothing more than taking up space in my bedroom. Add in another $25.25 that I generated by trading in some old video games to GameStop and another $54 that I generated by returning an unopened video game controller to Walmart and I’ve done pretty well this year in generating usable assets from completely unused stuff laying around my bedroom.

What remains of my once huge DVD collection

And I don’t think I’m done yet.

Take a look at the picture to the right to see what remains of my DVD and video game collection. It’s getting pretty scarce, don’t you think? Let me walk you through this thing starting with the media tower on the left side of the picture. The top and second shelves are filled with different DVDs that I haven’t yet traded in or that I’ve decided I’m not trading in. The third shelf with the stack of DVDs on it are product that I bought at a discount to give away on one of the wrestling sites that I own. The fourth shelf contains a few t-shirts that I’ll also being giving away on that wrestling site and a three-pack of DVDs that I received for Christmas. So in this media tower I really only have two shelves worth of DVDs that you can actually count towards my collection.

As for the media tower on the right, the first shelf contains all of my Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS video games. The second shelf contains the wrestling DVDs that I’m holding on to as well as some PC and PlayStation 2 video games. The third shelf mostly contains my Christmas DVD collection and the first few Family Guy box sets.

And that’s it. That’s what left of my DVD and video game collection. Pretty amazing, I think – especially when you consider that I once had probably 400 or so DVDs and video games in my college/post-college collection. What about you? Are there any old DVDs or video games laying around your house that you can trade-in to a store for some credit or sell on eBay for a few bucks?

If so, then what are you waiting for?!

FYE.com Has Horrible Customer Service

Now remember, I hadn’t regularly watched NBA games since I was in grade school and at the time I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan. Of course, I was probably a Bulls fan because when I was in grade school, Michael Jordan was destroying his competition. These days, I didn’t really feel a connection to that team so I turned to the Nets. The first thing I learned about the Nets was that they’re probably leaving New Jersey. Great. I’m not rooting for a team that is leaving the state. And what does that leave me with? Either the New York Knicks or the Philadelphia 76’ers. No thanks. I thought to myself that maybe I could find a team to root for if I had more time around the NBA and started looking into which basketball video games were popular. Not that I have time to play video games, but I thought it was a decent idea.

I did a little bit of research and it turns out that this NBA 2k11 game is supposed to be the best thing to ever grace a video game console since anything ever in the world. Or something like that… anyway, I pre-ordered the game for Nintendo Wii way back on August 31, 2010. Seems like a long time ago, right? Well, that’s the background that you need to know for my story. Oh, and you should know that the game was released for the Wii at some point last week and thus I should have had it in my hot little hands at this point.

As you might imagine, I didn’t get the game delivered to me. So, I sent the following message to FYE.com:

I’m sending this message to inquire about my order #XXXXXX. The online system shows it still listed as a pre-order and “in process.” Could you let me know when I should expect this game to be delivered to my home?

FYE.com sent me the following response which, I have to admit, reads like it was written by a robot. Take a look at this:

We appreciate your recent order.

Unfortunately, the item ordered is currently out of stock. We have placed this item on back order and expect it to become available for shipment within 30 days.

We will ship the item when it becomes available.

If you wish to cancel your order, please see the cancelation instructions below.

We sincerely apologize for the delay in processing this request.

And yes, they did provide extensive cancellation instructions below this note. Well, I thought that this didn’t sound right. How could a video game that I ordered months ago not be in stock when I was a pre-order? In my mind I started thinking, “Ugh. This is going to be one of those customer service experiences that you read about on Consumerist.com and, frankly, I’m really not in the mood for this type of crap. I’m going to cancel this thing and move on with my life.” With that in mind, I wrote the following message to the folks at FYE.com:

Thank you for the update. I just have an additional question. Since I pre-ordered this item back in August, how could it possibly be out of stock for a pre-order? Isn’t that the purpose of a pre-order – to have the item in stock so that the person that placed the pre-order doesn’t have to wait for an additional 30 days?

I’m going to cancel my order, but this is pretty ridiculous in terms of serving a pre-ordering customer. Unreal.

Look, I have no reason to bow down or cow-tow to a company that clearly doesn’t give a shit about me as a customer (just wait until you read the tirade I’m getting ready to unleash on Honda in the next few days). I normally wouldn’t write that last sentence and the “Unreal” comment, but FYE.com really had it coming to them with their robotic response and completely unacceptable additional 30 day delay. To their credit, I guess, they responded within 24 hours with this message:

Thank you for contacting the fye.com Customer Assistance Center

Please log into your account online or contact us at 800-818-1941, option 7, to submit a cancellation request.

That was it. Nothing else. No direct answer to any of my questions or an explanation of what was going on. By the time I received this absolute joke of a customer service response, I had already canceled my order. But this was pretty damn insulting and it led me to share my experiences with you fine folks. The lesson that I learned here is three-fold. First, FYE.com’s customer service absolutely sucks. They either have you talking to robots or people who act like robots. Listen up, FYE.com: when a customer asks a question – no matter how rude you think that question may be – you respond to that question. Second, FYE.com clearly doesn’t care about my business and thus, I’m not giving it to them. I happen to have a small credit over at GameStop and I’ll be going to their website to spend my money now. And third, FYE.com sucks when compared to the folks in their brick and mortar store.

What a shame. I wanted to like shopping at FYE.com but, instead, found it to be an annoying, aggravating experience. For shame, FYE.com. For shame.

Since F.Y.E. doesn’t take video games, I stopped at GameStop, too. Oh, and since I wound up with a few DVDs that F.Y.E. wouldn’t take, I dropped for movies off at the local SPCA as a donation for them to sell in their thrift shop. A final note – F.Y.E. had some deal where I was getting 20% more than I would have received if I opted to get cash back instead of store credit so I obviously went with that deal! Here’s what I wound up with at the end of the day:

Thanks, F.Y.E. and GameStop!

From GameStop:
Children of Mana (Nintendo DS) – $5.09
Sonic Rush (Nintendo DS) – $7.33
Super Mario Advance 2 (Nintendo Gameboy Advance) – $6.50
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 (Nintendo Wii) – $6.33
Total: $25.25

Donated to SPCA:
Big Momma’s House – Special Edition
Little Shop of Horrors (Jack Nicholson Edition)
Barber Shop
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys (New, CGI-based Musical Version)
Total: Not applicable, but I feel good for having donated these otherwise unusable DVDs!

All told, at the end of the day I’ve got two gift cards worth $61.08 and $25.25 each. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have that extra $86.33 worth of buying power so I feel good knowing that today I translated some unused, dusty “assets” into usable store credit. And while I had some very minor, almost nonexistent, conflicts about whether or not to trade in some of the titles listed above (which I definitely didn’t have when I traded in the titles two and a half months ago) I know that trading in these DVDs and video games was the right thing to do on so many levels.

As people, we all run the risk of getting too involved with our physical objects. For me, what it boils down to is that there’s no reason for a person to feel any type of connection or need for a DVD that they haven’t watched in years and that has contributed nothing to a person’s life or space other than acting as a dust catcher. Frankly, I don’t need any more dust catchers thank you very much.

All of that being said, I now look at my remaining DVD collection of about 150 titles – easily half of what I used to own – and I’m wondering what Round Three of this purge may look like one day. I have a bunch of Christmas movies that I know I’m not going to part with because I watch them all at least twice a year. Same thing with my Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVDs – I enjoy watching them once or twice each year. However, I look at my Family Guy box sets and I know that I haven’t opened them up in over a year and a half, if not longer. Same thing goes for my Smallville box sets, though I think I’d like to watch the Smallville box sets again one more time before sending them off to F.Y.E. I also have a bunch of WWE DVDs that I certainly haven’t watched in a long time. Instead of bringing them to F.Y.E., though, I’ll probably wind up giving them to my younger brother and letting him do what he wants with them, I guess.

Then I have some movies that I really do like, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch them on a consistent enough basis to warrant allowing them to continue to collect dust. These titles include (among many others) Nothing But Trouble, Funny Farm, The Great Outdoors, Private Parts, Caddyshack II, Spaceballs, Office Space, Wedding Crashers, Shrek, and Shrek 2.

Stay tuned and see what I trade in or donate next! I’m thinking that it’ll be some of my used books to those good folks at EcoEncore.org. Oh, and on that topic – does anyone know where I can donate used cell phones for a good cause?

Done? Good!

Thanks, F.Y.E.!

What was all of that spending for? I don’t really know. What I do know, however, is that these days I literally have to blow the dust off of my DVDs before I pull out a case to watch a movie. I also know that the only movies that I watch on a regular basis are my Christmas movies and Lord of the Rings movies – and I only watch them once or twice per year!

My reason for going over all of this information before getting to the meat of this entry is to lay the groundwork for how good I felt the other day. You see, the other day a video game was released that I wanted to buy. I don’t buy many video games because, frankly, I don’t have the time to play them. However, whenever a game comes out that seems like it might be fun and worth the money, I’ll buy the game. Well, you all know that I have this incredible student loan debt that I’m paying off via a crazy intense repayment plan that I put myself on. Let’s do some quick math:

New Video Game + Student Loan Debt = You’re Not Buying The Game

It’s simple. As I alluded to in my last student loan entry, I wanted the game, but I didn’t need the game. Yet in the real world game of money (which we’re all playing whether you know it or not) there are often opportunities to rearrange one’s existing assets to allow for new assets to be acquired.

What does that mean? Easy. It means that I set my eyes on the dusty DVD collection sitting in my bedroom and thought to myself, “I want that game and I’m willing to unload these assets to get it.” And that’s just what I did at the end of last week. I rounded up some 50+ DVDs, threw them in a bag, and went to my local F.Y.E. to trade them in. F.Y.E. actually offers either cash or store credit for your used DVDs. When I arrived at the store, the kid behind the counter told me that I would get more for each DVD if I accepted store credit instead of cash, so I went with that option.

Below is a list with all of the DVDs that I traded in for store credit and how much I received for each one. It’s pretty interesting.

What's left of my DVD collection

Starsky and Hutch – $2.15
Saturday Night Live: The Best of Jon Lovitz – $0.31
Joe Dirt – $1.25
Analyze This – $1.25
Boiler Room – $1.25
Grumpy Old Men – $2.50
Grumpier Old Men – $0.31
Ghostbusters 1 & 2 – $2.50
Zoolander – $1.25
Farhenhype 9/11 – $1.25
Fraggle Rock – Where it All Began – $2.50
The Island – $2.50
The Dukes of Hazzard – $2.50
Anchorman – $2.50
Alice in Wonderland: Made for TV Movie – $2.50
Dude, Where’s My Car? – $1.25
Rocky Triple Pack (Rocky 1, 2, and 3) – $4.38
National Treasure – $1.25
Planet of the Apes – $1.25
Spider-Man Deluxe Edition – $2.69
Spider-Man 2 – $2.50
The Day After Tomorrow – $1.25
Fantastic 4 – $1.25
A Fish Called Wanda – $2.50
Edward Scissorhands – $1.88
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Top 10 Episodes from Season 1 – $2.50
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – $2.50
i, Robot – $2.50
Seven – $2.50
Men in Black II – $1.25
The Future is Wild – $3.75
Shark Tale – $1.25
Chicken Run – $2.50
Hulk – $1.25
The Green Mile – $1.88
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure – $5.63
TNA Genesis 2005 – $2.50
The Rock – The People’s Champion – $4.84
‘Cause Stone Cold Said So – $1.25
Austin 3:16: Uncensored – $1.25
SummerSlam 2001 – $5.91
Unforgiven 2001 – $5.63
X-Men 1.5 – $2.50
X-Men 2 – $1.25
X-Men 3 – $2.50
Forrest Gump – $1.25
Million Dollar Baby – $2.50

Who would have thunk that Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (one of the many DVDs that I purchased, but never actually watched) would be worth over $5 to F.Y.E.? Amazing.

How much did I get for all of these unused, dust-collecting DVDs? How does $105.61 in store credit sound?! Not bad! What’s better is that the video game and necessary peripheral that I purchased from F.Y.E. wound up costing $102.69 after shipping and taxes. Talk about hitting the nail right on the head!

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And at the end of the day, not only have I rearranged some of my assets to acquire two new assets, but I unloaded a big portion of my dusty DVD collection. I don’t think that I’m on track to get rid of all of my DVDs, but I’m definitely looking at the DVDs you see in that picture and asking myself, “Which ones are next?”