New monitors in hand, ready for action

12 years on the road – you’d think I’d learned my lessons by now but there’s always a way to teach an old dog new tricks. This year, I thought I’d gotten clever. I beat the system and combined the art of promotion with some green thinking and practical savings. I bought new monitors for the trade show. That doesn’t sound particularly inventive, but it is when you consider the money spent and how it’s used. We could have spent $500 renting monitors for our booth. Instead, we bought 2 brand new monitors for about $440 and are giving them away as prizes. Ya, ok, we’re still shelling out the money, but this way, two attendees at the show walk away with great prizes – a much better result than putting the money into the hands of someone charging near-criminal fees to rent equipment.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for free enterprise and those in the rental business deserve to make a good living off of their services, but I do draw the line at the decidedly outrageous.

We ordered internet service to our booth for the show. It cost more for 3 days of service than the average household spends on high-speed internet for 3 years. I can live with that. This stuff takes a lot of work to set up for a show. I paid extra for a second line because the instructions mentioned things like being cut off for bringing your own hub. I left the hub at home.

We arrived at our booth to find only one internet line hanging from the ceiling. I called the Internet people and was assured that all I had to do to engage the second line was to attach my hub and cables – the ones I had left at home for fear of being disconnected. I mentioned this and they offered to rent them to me for approximately $440, with a $149 credit after the show.

I was close to buying a hub and cables at the store earlier that day when I bought the monitors. I wanted to extend our hotel room’s archaic single-line internet connection (maybe I’ll get to that story in another post) but thought the $65 expense was a little much and left without them. I did the math, got in the cab, headed back to the mall and now own a small hub and two cables.

Apparently, I’m in the wrong business. Why bother with this software stuff when I can make people’s lives better by renting them stuff for upwards of 1000% more than the retail price? Seems like a good plan to me.