Written by SmartMoney

Don’t toss that busted iPod. Don’t just take those old books and CDs to a thrift store. These online outlets might give you cool cash for your castoffs.

The Department of Energy recently launched a "cash for refrigerators" program to encourage consumers to replace their old appliances with new, energy-efficient ones. Babies R Us now offers a 20% discount on cribs, strollers and other pieces of baby gear to customers who bring in used ones.

Other retailers will pay for your unwanted books, compact discs, DVDs, and old and broken iPods — without requiring you to purchase new ones.

However, unlike the government-run programs or in-store promotions, most of these services operate exclusively online. Consumers are required to mail in their items and then wait to be paid by check or PayPal. The draw is the convenience. For example, rather than lug your books to a used-book store, you can take them to the nearest post office or FedEx drop-off location. And with most services, shipping charges are paid by the retailer.

Of course, any business transaction conducted through the mail and on good faith comes with risks. You might be quoted a certain price for your stuff, but if the business deems your description inaccurate, that quote could change. Or the business might reject your items altogether and discard them unless you cover the return-shipping costs. And because these are all for-profit ventures that resell your items and pay the shipping costs, they are likely to offer you a lower price than you might get if you dealt directly with a buyer on eBay or Craigslist.

Still, if you’re looking for an easy way to clean out your bookshelves or entertainment center, these services might be worth a try. Just be sure to vet a company before putting your stuff in the mail. Check its Better Business Bureau rating. Anything lower than an A or B should raise a flag, says Michael Galvin, a spokesman for the BBB of Southeast Florida and the Caribbean.

If you see a lower grade, call the local BBB to find out why. The branch can tell you whether there’s a pattern of complaints about the business and point out other concerns. If there are registered complaints, check whether they have been resolved.

And before you send in your stuff, get an idea of what it’s worth and how that value compares with the company’s quote. The easiest way to do that is to check the selling prices of similar items on eBay, says Doug Norwine of Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas.

Here are three businesses to consider:

1. Books

Run by McKenzie Books in Beaverton, Ore., Cash4Books.net will pay you between 57 cents and $120 per used book. How much you get depends on a book’s weight and retail value, how quickly it is expected to sell and how many copies are already in the company’s warehouse, says Crystalin Tadano, senior customer-service representative. The company specializes in college textbooks and technical books, which are more likely to pay top dollar than, say, paperback novels.

On average, sellers get about $20 per book, according to Tadano, though a recent check by SmartMoney yielded lower results. The personal finance and investing books we ran through the Cash4Books.net system would fetch about $5 at best (we were quoted $4.50 for "The Progressive Discipline Handbook: Smart Strategies for Coaching Employees," with CD-ROM, by Margie Mader-Clark and Lisa Guerin). Getting an online quote is easy. Just enter the book’s ISBN (international standard book number).

The perks: Shipping is paid by Cash4Books. You get free FedEx shipping if you sell five or more books. You can get paid by check or PayPal. If you choose the latter, you get a 3% bonus to offset the PayPal fees.

The fine print: Cash4Books will not accept books with tears to the cover or pages, major wear to the binding, missing or loose pages, water or other damage, or a strong odor. Writing, underlining or highlighting is OK as long as it appears to be on fewer than 20% of the book’s pages, but such blemishes might result in a reduction of the quoted price. If any books are not accepted, McKenzie will ship them back only at your expense.

Due diligence: The Better Business Bureau has registered nine consumer complaints about McKenzie over the past 36 months. All have been resolved. The company has an A rating.

2. CDs, DVDs and games

Do you have old CDs, DVDs and games gathering dust on your shelves? A Santa Barbara, Calif.-area company, Morninglory Music, which runs CashforCDs.com, will pay you between $1 and $3 per CD and DVD, and between $3 and $5 for each PlayStation, Xbox or Wii game, says Stan Bernstein, the company’s owner. How much you get depends on a disc’s title and condition.

The average customer gets between $4 and $20 for six CDs (the minimum number of discs you must ship to participate). Our experience was pretty much in line with that estimate. We were quoted $20 for two CDs, one DVD and three games (one each for PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox), each in good or excellent condition. But we did strike out on the six other CDs we inquired about, which included INXS’ 1990 album "X" and Pearl Jam’s "Ten" from 1991.

CashforCDs.com isn’t currently buying them. Bernstein says there is an oversupply of certain CDs, with not much demand, a trend that isn’t likely to reverse.

The perks: You don’t need the cases. The company will send you a postage-paid mailer for the CDs and the front and back covers.

The fine print: For copyright purposes, the company requires the front and back covers of each CD, DVD or game.

Due diligence: Morninglory Music is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau. It had one complaint within the past 36 months, and it has been resolved.

3. iPhones, Zunes and other small electronics

Don’t just toss your old or broken iPod, Zune or iPhone. Rapid Repair of Kalamazoo, Mich., will be happy to pay you for it. The company, which has been in business since 2004, specializes in repairing small electronics but also buys them from consumers to use for spare parts or to repair and resell as refurbished. How much you get for your unwanted gadget depends on its model and condition. You might get anywhere from $20 to $50 for an old iPod with a broken screen, if the device or its spare parts are in demand, says Ben Levy, the company’s owner. An iPhone 3G can fetch up to $200.

The perks: You can get cash for an item that you can’t otherwise sell or repair.

The fine print: Rapid Repair does not accept gadgets with liquid damage — a diagnosis few users can pronounce on their own — so you might end up sending in an iPod and getting nothing in return. Postage is paid by the seller, though given the size of the items, the cost is fairly low.

Due diligence: The company has an A rating with the BBB. All four companies filed against it in the past 36 months have been resolved.

This article was reported by Aleksandra Todorova for SmartMoney.

Written by thechive

A friend of mine actually works with the sender of this email at a large ad agency in Chicago, who sent the below farewell email this morning, company-wide and forwarded it to me.

Since you can’t click on the youtube link in the email, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuBRk6tjiUQ

Written by holytaco

Helping a girl move is like sitting through a screening of Beverly Hills Chihuahua with a clothespin on your ballsack:  it’s completely miserable, it hurts like hell, and you gain absolutely nothing from it.  Most girls have no idea how to move, which is why they’re asking for your help, and if you agree to help them then you’re willingly walking in to the shittiest day of your life.  If you’re not convinced yet, here are 7 specific reasons why you should never help a girl move:

It’s Going to Take Way More Than Two Hours

Girls are terrible at gauging the time it takes to do things.  This is why, if you make the mistake of going somewhere with a girl, you’re always going to be late.  She’s going to tell you that it’ll only take two hours to move her entire apartment.  She’s not deliberately lying to you on purpose. She just can’t tell how long things take to happen.  She has absolutely no idea how long it takes to curl her own hair, let alone load, transport, and unload the entire contents of a one-bedroom apartment.  Try not to be too harsh when you’re telling her that she’s completely bat-shit crazy.

You’re Going To Have To Drive The Moving Truck

One of the most terrible moving-related lies is the old "we can do it in one trip" line.  It doesn’t matter that she rented the biggest f*cking truck that U-Haul had to offer.  That just means that you’re going to have to drive that four-wheeled monstrosity back and forth across town for five hours while she sits in the passenger seat and bitches at you about how you need to be more cautious, because she didn’t get the insurance.  She may even claim that she’ll handle the driving, but the moment it’s time to back out of the driveway or take a sharp corner, it’ll be you behind the wheel for the rest of the day.  Also, you will hit something.  You will.

The Couch Is Not Going To Fit Up The Stairs

We hate referencing the tv show Friends for anything (unless it’s some kind of "What’s more gay?"-type argument) but when it comes to moving couches, they totally nailed it.  Staircase designers go to great lengths to ensure that stairwells are completely unsuitable for the transportation of couches.  That’s like the first thing they teach you in staircase-making school. You may make it up one or two flights of stairs, but this girl that you’re helping doesn’t live on the first or second floor of her new building.  She’s on the seventh floor, which means that your life is going to get about five times more miserable before you can even come back downstairs for the ridiculous collection of bookcases that she’s accumulated.  It’s best to just avoid the situation altogether.  Also, Ross is a pussy.

She Has Way More Shit Than She Thinks She Has

When girls are moving, they assess the amount of crap that they have like a self-conscious dude in a gang bang: they just awkwardly scan the room and consider only the things that are larger than they are.  If you ask a girl right now what she has in her living room, she’ll probably say she has a couch, a tv, and a coffee table.  I guarantee you that that’s about 1/30th of the contents of her living room.  It’s not her fault, and she’s not doing it on purpose.  She’s just not engineered to think about the tons and tons of useless shit she has scattered all over the place, because if she did then she would realize that she should just throw that shit away, and then she wouldn’t have all that junk, and then she wouldn’t be a girl, now would she?

You’re Worth More Than $7 Worth of Pizza and Beer

You’re about to spend an entire day lifting things that are way too heavy for you to be lifting, and you’re going to be doing that for way longer than you should.  You’re probably going to suffer some serious spinal damage, and you’re going to be pissed off the whole time, and the last thing you need is to be drunk while you’re doing that.  You think it’s hard to carry a futon matress when you’re perfectly sober?  Try doing it when you can’t even see straight.

She’s Not Going To Help You At All

When she asks you if you’ll help her move, what she’s really saying is, "Will you pack up all of my belongings, drive me to my new apartment, and then unpack all of that shit while I organize my bathroom medicine cabinet?" If you would answer "No f*cking way" to that question, then you’d better use the same answer for her request for moving help, because while you’re trying to cram her dead grandma’s antique china cabinet into a way-too-small "service" elevator, she’ll be making sure the forks look tidy in the silverware drawer.  That’s right: she’s not even going to use the f*cking 300-pound china cabinet to put the dishes in. In fact, there’s only one good reason to ever help a girl move, and unfortunately we’ve got some bad news for you:

She’s Not Going To Have Sex With You

That’s right: even after you’ve worked your ass off all day to carry every f*cking thing she owns up and down seven flights of stairs, she’s still not going to have sex with you.  Of course, she realizes that’s the possibility of a good post-moving bonerfest is the only reason why you’re helping her, so it’s in her best interest to cultivate the possibility of gratitude sex for the entirety of the ordeal.  Therefore, it will piss you off even more when she explains that she’s really tired from a long day of moving (read: hanging up her clothes in her closet while you tried to avoid being crushed by a credenza) and she just wants to go to sleep.  You will end this day exhausted, pissed off, horny, drunk, and with a f*cked up back problem that’ll take years to fix.  It’s all downhill from there, so just avoid it altogether and don’t ever help a girl move.