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A while back, I bought a daily deal for SockGrams.com.  Sock Grams are a nice little surprise you can send to anyone for any occasion instead of flowers.  I sent a Sock Gram to two colleagues when they were having a really rough time.  They absolutely LOVED them and thought they were so much better than getting flowers.

Each Sock Gram comes with a personalized card and is wrapped beautifully.  There are so many styles to choose from, too.

Right now, Sock Grams is offering a 30% off code for back to school.  You can send your college student a little pick me up their first week back or surprise your school aged child with some fun socks for their first day.  Just use the code Off2School30 at checkout to get 30% off your order.

I also want to say the people at SockGrams.com are SUPER helpful and nice.  And (OMG!) amazingly responsive to emails.  This is one of the best companies I’ve worked with.

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I am contacted every so often by a company that would like me to review their product.  Some I accept, and some I don’t.  However, when I was contacted and asked to do a review on Nipozzano Riserva Chianti ruffina wine, I did not hesitate saying yes. 

When I received the Nippozzano in the mail, I decided to wait until I had dinner with my parents because they are huge wine enthusiasts.  I have dinner with them every Tuesday, so I didn’t have to wait long.   And because my mom and dad are much more knowledgible about wines than I, I charged my mom with writing the actual review.  Here’s what she had to say:

Our daughter Gina arrived for dinner the other night toting a bottle of chianti,
our family’s wine of choice.  The 2008 Nipozzano Reserva produced by the Frescobaldi family at Castello di Nipozzano located in Tuscany called to us as soon as we uncorked the bottle.  Its  fruity aroma  was so enticing that Gina and I sampled a small glass with some cheese well before the wine had a chance to breathe.  From the first sip, I was
hooked.  The wine was dry and smooth,  providing  complex flavors and a pleasing
finish.  Although this chianti would pair very nicely with any red meat entree,
I was pleased that it complemented the baked chicken, carrot, onion, and
mushroom dish I served for dinner.  Gina’s dad summed up our experience by
saying, “This Nipozzano is a superior wine for the price.”

I LOVE red wine; however, not all reds are created equal.  And sometimes a good red doesn’t mean the most expensive.  I’ve had several bottles of expensive red wine that were just okay, and many inexpensive reds that were suburb. I have to concur with my parents and give this wine five thumbs up.  At only about $20 a bottle, this is a huge bang for your buck!

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With seven cats and a large dog, buying pet supplies and food is a back breaking experience.  Because I have a large herd of pets at my house, I always buy the biggest bags of food and cat litter.  I don’t want to be running to the store every three days to buy the things I need to keep my pets happy, so I always get the big ones.  The problem is the big bags are wicked heavy, and I don’t always have someone with me to carry them out to the car or into the house.

Recently, MrChewy.com contacted me and asked if I would like to do a review of their website.  In exchange, they provided me with a $50 coupon code to buy some items from their site.  Since I was running low on cat and dog treats, I decided to order two large bags of Friskies cat food and a couple of beef bones for the dog.  Although Friskies isn’t what most people would buy for cat treats, I’ve found it’s the cheapest way to go.  I buy a good quality cat food and use the Friskies (what I term as “Lucky Charms” cat food) for treats.  My cats love it, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying those small bags of Pounce.

I absolutely loved using the MrChewy.com website to place my order.  It was very user friendly and I was able to place my order in no time.  What was even more impressive was how fast my order arrived at my house.  I think I received my order only 3 days after placing it.

The best part of MrChewy.com was that my order came right to my door and I didn’t have to lift ANYTHING.  The delivery man brought everything right into my house.  No more killing myself to make the pets happy.  Oh yeah – shipping is free, too, when you spend $49 or more.  Woo Hoo!

The Mr. Chewy website has just about everything you need in the way of pet food, treats, and litter at very reasonable prices.  I compared several of the top brands of pet food with what you would pay in the store, and Mr. Chewy was the same or cheaper in just about every case.

If you are tired of lugging heavy bags of food and litter home for your pets, I highly recommend you give MrChewy.com a spin!

 A $50 gift code was provided to me to purchase items from MrChewy.com.  No other compensation was provided to me to write this review.  All opinions are 100% mine and have not been influenced in any way.

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The following review was written by my husband, Gary McNeff:

Used car salesmen.

If you’re anything like me, that phrase conjures up visions akin to the snake oil salesmen from the Old West – fast talking folks that would sell their own mother for the right price and wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them in the backside.

So, why am I writing a review of a used auto dealer?  Because when you find one that is the exact opposite of that stereotype, it should be celebrated to encourage more of them to excel to higher standards.

Yes, I know that my wife’s blog is generally devoted to coupons, or as she says “all things coupon/free/cheap”.  But after living with her for the last several years, I can tell you that what she leaves out of that little catchphrase of hers for the sake of brevity are things like “quality”, “fairness” and “honesty” – things that also seem to typically be very lacking in the used car sales business – at least in our experience.

We were in the market to pick up a used car recently and were dreading it.  The hassle of going back and forth and trying to find a vehicle we wanted,  the haggling with the dealer, crossing our fingers that the vehicle we ultimately paid for would last more than a few hundred miles without having to go to the shop (I’m so NOT a mechanic).  All of these things and a hundred more were going through our minds when we started looking for a vehicle.

We decided that East Windsor was our best bet.  Because of the huge auction house there, there have to be at least 20 (if not many more) used car dealers along a fairly short stretch of Route 5.  We went out at about noon on a Saturday and started looking.  Some of the dealerships had the prices posted on the vehicles (thank you!!) which would at least give us a ball park idea of what they were asking although we knew that there would be some “wiggle room” when you started to talk to them about prices.  Many of them had no prices posted (WTH?  If I go to Best Buy to get a TV, I don’t have to guess how much they are asking; why should I do this with a vehicle?).  In the first nine places we stopped, not one had someone come out to talk to us, even simply to say “hello, we’re here if you need us”.  We did test drive a couple of vehicles, but nothing we were that impressed with.

When we pulled in to A1 Auto Wholesalers, we expected the same.  We saw a couple of vehicles we were interested in and thought we were going to have to go in and drag someone away from their computer games (or whatever they were doing) to come out and help us.  We were very pleasantly surprised when someone came out to greet us, told us they didn’t want to bother us at all but wanted us to know there were there to help if we needed it.

We ended up buying one of the vehicles from them after a couple of different test drives.  We were both very impressed with how open and honest the dealer was – something we had not ever really run into before in buying a used vehicle (and I’m fifty – so I’ve done this once or twice before).

One of our primary questions was: what happens if we get this home and the next day something happens to it?  Because it’s a used vehicle and there is no warranty, will you take care of it or are we left to our own devices?  He assured us that if that happened, he’d stand behind it and help us out.

We ended up having to test this out.  Two days later, at 10:00 PM, I had a call from my daughter.  They were stranded at Wendy’s after getting out of work because it wouldn’t start.  I drove down and gave them a jump and got the vehicle home.  This was on a Saturday and the dealership is closed on Sunday, so we called first thing Monday morning.

We spoke to our salesman (who is also the owner) and he had us bring the vehicle in that morning.  He was as good as his word.  He had it repaired (along with a couple of other very minor things we had noticed) and back to us within a few hours with no additional charges whatsoever.

We feel very good about doing business there and would VERY highly recommend them to anyone looking for a used vehicle.  I know you have lots of choices when you’re looking for a used car – but we know where we’re going first the next time we need one.

Thank you Tracy for restoring our faith in the used car business!!!

A1 Auto Wholesalers, East Windsor, CT

142 South Main Street

East Windsor, CT 06088

www.a1autowholesalers.com

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This review was written by my husband, Gary McNeff.

After a fiasco we had on Labor Day, I decided to write a review of Char-Broil’s product “The Big Easy Infrared Turkey Fryer”. We truly hope that no one else makes the possibly deadly mistake of buying one of these as we did.

We have owned this particular unit for approximately a year and a half, and if you had asked me my opinion six months ago, it would have been very different. The unit DOES do what it says it does –it cooks a turkey in much less time than a traditional fryer and keeps it moist and tender.

So you’re probably asking why then would I change my mind six months later? That’s what I’m going to explain.

On Memorial Day, we had friends and family over for a big cookout (about 24 people). We had the smoker and grill going with ribs, BBQ’d chicken, burgers and dogs, but the star was going to be the turkey.

I started it before everyone got there and was in the kitchen working on some other items when one of the kids came running in, all in a panic. He said that there was a fire out there and that I should come quick and see. The rest of the adults were off to the side of the house talking and the kids had been playing badminton in back.

I initially assumed that he was being overly dramatic – there was a fire in the smoker after all and I thought that’s what he was talking about but I decided to go look. I’m glad I did…if I hadn’t, the results could have been disastrous.

The controls on the bottom of the unit where the wires connected to make a spark to start the fire had actually caught fire. At the point I walked out and saw it, the hose to the propane tank was burning and the plastic knob for controlling the temperature dropped (melted) off.

The hose looked like one of those cartoons or old westerns you see. You know, the ones with the really long fuse that is slowly burning towards the dynamite. Only in this case, the “fuse” was the propane hose and the “dynamite” was the propane tank – and it wasn’t burning slowly either, it was feeding off of the propane coming through the hose and rapidly approaching the propane tank.

My other nephew got to the tank before I could and turned it off and I stomped on the hose itself until the flames went out. I truly hate to think of what would have happened if I had gone out even one minute later or if my nephew hadn’t seen what was happening and warned me.

This unit was cleaned before and after each use – it was covered and stored inside. It had been running for approximately an hour and a half prior this happening (it had been used maybe five times over the last year and a half with no incidents). In short, this was not a case of “user error” or incompetence, it was a case of something being wrong with the unit itself.

I made a point of calling Char-Broil to tell them about this. They expressed concern over whether or not anyone was hurt and requested pictures of the unit. That’s where their concern ended. They cared about their liability if someone was injured and nothing else. If this has happened to me, I’m certain I’m not alone – or won’t be in the future. Their complete lack of interest (other than if I was going to sue them) is very telling as a company.

We certainly won’t be buying any other products from Char-Broil – and truly hope you help spread the word so no one else has the same issues we did.