Get paid to watch TV!

We got paid $20 to watch TV. No joke! Here's how. Back in December we bought a Sony DVD recorder / VCR combo from Costco for $204. While the unit did a great job of recording DVDs and all, it started flaking out on us, doing weird stuff with the DVD tray. If you opened the tray to drop in a DVD, it would close on you immediately. You had to stand there and slap the DVD into the tray the exact split-second it was out there. This started oh, what, maybe a couple months ago? We put up with it, but a couple weeks ago it got worse, the unit would instead open it's tray and not close it. Last night was the end of it, when even mint condition DVDs would come up as non-readable. So back to Costco we go with the unit.

Tonight we take it in to Costco and I messed up and didn't have the remote with me. Back home we go. Back we return with the remote. We didn't have the box, but we did have the receipt and all the stuff in the box. They were cool with the whole thing and gave us our $204 back. Sweet! So, we did need (okay, "want") another similar unit, and we go looking. They had, get this, the exact same model still on sale, except it was $20 less by now, probably since it's now seven months older and newer models come out all the time. We decide to buy the same model again, why not?

So, we got use of the DVD/VCR recorder for seven months, and basically got paid $20 for that period of time. Not bad, getting paid $20 to watch TV! well, more like "watch DVDs", but "Watch TV" sounds so much better.