One of the biggest things I hate about living in Guatemala is the seemingly constant deluge of stupidity from companies.

For instance, when paying your electric bill, you have to have exact change. They don't allow you pay via card (they told me it was because Visa doesn't do that kind of thing over the phone -- WTF?), so you physically have to go in with cash or a check. I once saw someone show up, and their check was for 10 or 20 cents more than their bill (which was for hundreds). They told him to come back with the correct amount.

One thing that really annoyed me was with PriceSmart. Usually they seem to be rather intelligent people, and most problems have had a nice resolution. However, for quite some time I was trying to buy a trampoline. I called all around the country looking for stores. Some had them, but with crazy prices (say, $600 or $800). PriceSmart sells them as well. However, out of the many times I went to PriceSmart, they never had them in stock. I asked them “Why oh why don't you buy enough? They keep on selling out!“ The response was “We do buy enough. But people keep on buying all of them.“

Well, this just happened at Target. I just bought 2 Philips DVP642 players. Why? Well, simply, it's the best bloody player out there. Region free, plays DivX, XviD, optical and digital coax output, handles DVD+/-R +/-RW and +R DL. What more can I ask for? And at a price of $70, it's cheaper than most other players out there. Well, I asked to purchase this at Target and was told “Oh yea, for some reason everyone wants that one. So we're always sold out.“ .... So even the sales clerks realise that it's a hot seller (even though they can't stand why anyone would want to pay less for more), yet they don't stock up on them... Sigh.

The good thing is that now I'm realising the business idiots are all over the place too. I used to think the USA had capitalism and business logic deeply infused in it, but knowing that is not true makes it a bit easier to deal with it wherever I live -- at least I'll know the grass isn't always greener :).