Ask a random bystander if he’s into online gambling and he might sniff that he doesn’t waste his money on games of chance. Ask him instead if he ever bought a refurbished piece of electronic equipment from an online retailer and he might say sure, from time to time. Well, newsflash, bystander, that’s online gambling.

Some online retailers will permit you to send back a refurb as easily as you would a new item, issuing you a magical RMA (return merchandise authorization, aka return material authorization). But just as often, you may find that your retailer’s policy is to replace your refurb rather than credit your original form of payment. A “with beans” correspondent recently tried to use a retailer’s online form to return a lousy refurbished phone and the knee-jerk response of the form was to spit back the response that an RMA could not be issued for the item. In so many words, the retailer’s was saying “Either keep your lousy phone or have us send you one that you now have reason to believe may suck just as much.”

Well, there’s a fiendishly simple way to get around that, and it comes down to three magic words: email or call the customer service department and say you understand the policy but that you see this as a customer satisfaction issue. Coolly dropping this phrase works almost every time, because linguistically and otherwise you’ve sidestepped the Draconian return policy and elevated your case to a realm that’s a bit more intangible. In the case of the bum phone, our correspondent sent an email with that phrase and within ten minutes got a response – by phone – from an apologetic rep who never once lectured him about the restrictive, stated return policy and graciously issued an RMA. That’s good news for you, very smart business for them.

Image source: Davide Vizzini via Wikimedia Commons

For the average consumer, going green can be a multi-part question: What green products can I introduce into my daily life, are they really making a difference when it comes to saving energy and the environment, and are these products any good? Answers to all of these questions intersect neatly in an unlikely place – an Amazon Listmania! List on the Best of Green Gadgets and Energy Savers.

A Listmania list can sometimes be self-serving affair constructed around the motivation of the lister – that’s not a cynical comment, it’s just the way it is, as all of the products on the list are for sale. But given that all Amazon reviews have user comments attached to them, the list begins to feel more objective.

The selling point of the green gadgets list, quite simply, is that it’s a good discussion starter for your household. Many of us know there are little ways we could be saving energy, but we’re not often armed with enough information about them. Did you know there was such a thing as a handheld electricity usage monitor that, according to the manufacturer, “shows the operating costs of your household appliances” and “calculates cost and forecasts by week, month and year”? Perhaps you heard tell of such a thing, but does it work? Two hundred customer reviews add up to a cumulative 4 ½ star rating, which, if you’re accustomed to relying on user reviews, is a good sign. The “works great, fast results” type of comment dominates, but look for yourself. As with any product, it’s the details, even within the positive reviews, that call the product’s usefulness for you into question.

Among the list’s items is one that’s decidedly old school –a classic push-reel lawn mower that users say is safer, quieter, and better for the environment. But in the words of one user it requires “a little more elbow grease” especially on hills. So you might want to ask yourself, is that additional exercise going to benefit you in the long term, or will it cause a strain? Hypothetical questions, of course, but all worth asking if you’re thinking about new ways to go green.

Image Source: P3 International

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still generates enough buzz that CNET’s into its fifth year of nominating products for its Best of CES Awards, and among the gadgets that made the cut for its Best of CES 2010 round-up is the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid.

Hearing the word “hybrid” associated with a car may not immediately generate skepticism about whether and how well it works, but when it comes to smaller gadgets it’s a natural reaction, and CNET raises good questions about this notebook whose screen undocks from the keyboard “to become its own handheld Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered tablet.” CNET makes the point that a Lenovo rep demonstrated the undocking at the show, which makes the reviewers “curious as to how delicate the procedure is and whether the laptop might accidentally disconnect under casual use” and also wonder “will both devices sync well with each other? Will the battery life be suitable? None of these could be determined in the space of a few minutes.”

Those concerns aside, it’s hard to deny not only how cool this thing looks but how cool it would be to utilize it in a presentation if it actually works the way it should. CNET noted that the tablet’s touchscreen performance and video playback was a mixed bag, but the one feature to get excited about is that “the base, when detached, can continue to function as its own Core 2 computer independent of the tablet–a monitor would need to be attached, but it opens up possibilities for the U1 to truly act as two devices in one. Separate batteries and Wi-Fi antennas are contained in both the base and the tablet screen, while the tablet has the 3G and Bluetooth antennas, as well as speakers and a webcam.”

This kind of redundancy, we’ll say again, is exciting, especially when you consider how versatile the hybrid would be if, say, at a trade show you could easily attach another monitor to the U1’s keyboard to let your colleague continue demonstrating an app at your company’s booth while you ran off with the tablet to demo something else. Practically, it would probably be easier to have two separate devices, but that’s where the cleverness of the end-user comes in – how could having this undockable tablet really save me time and energy on a day-to-day basis? What do you think?

Image source: Lenovo

If you’ve ever spent sleepless nights watching infomercials for the Miracle Brownie Pan or Miracle Mop, you’re hit over the head with the notion that you need to take these things you’re already doing, like making brownies or mopping up the ensuing mess — and do them better.

Never mind that every gadget appears to be “miraculous” or “magical” – that’s the marketing department’s handiwork — but if you start with that entirely viable idea of doing something better that you’re already doing and reframe it a bit so that it becomes “How can I take something that I really can’t do at all and do it,” you end up with a gadget like Joby’s Gorillapod, the flexible tripod that permits you to mount your cameras and other devices seemingly anywhere.

There are seven versions of the Gorillapod now, including the original camera mount and models for heavier-duty cameras and handheld devices as well as magnetic version that could turn your car door, say, into a base for a tripod so you can self-time that photo of you and your family at a windy scenic overlook.

One reason Gorillapod seems almost effortlessly life-changing as an invention is that without our realizing it, the makers plant a few possible uses for it in our head and then inspire us to come up with others. The press area of the company’s Web site provides a trove of ideas – take the tree limb with the camera mounted to it; there’s no real context for the photo, but perhaps it’ll put you in mind of the tree in your backyard that can now provide an assist when you want to shoot your family holiday card.

Rather than just make perfect brownies, the Gorillapod can be plugged into almost any situation we get ourselves into – it’s open ended – the mark, one could argue, of an admirable invention.

Image source: Joby