Well I also did get the warrantee on the seats, though I never needed to use it.

They can be good negotiating points, though. Often, they will reduce the price of the vehicle more than the cost of the add on because they make more profit on the add-on than the difference in price of the car. And often the add-ons are preinstalled, so they have to give them to you anyway. Not true for all brands or dealers, but works for some.

With my last car there was a windshield coating, leather seat coating and bumpers on the door edges. After getting them nearly at the price I wanted, I told them I'd buy the seat coating if they'd lower the price another thousand below my previous price. The windshield coating and bumpers were also on the car when I finally got it. But I didn't get the warranty on them, of course.

I'm sorry the current state of things has made it necessary for you. It's especially frustrating when so many medical procedures are called "unnecessary" by the health insurance industry, but truly unnecessary surgery is being made necessary by the same people's political choices.

And this is why so many of all genders are choosing sterilization these days. I'm sure that will soon be illegal as well, though, along with most other forms of birth control.

Doubt that's US Dollars.

A lot of times of it's a very small, light item, there are contracts that allow for expedited shipping through government channels which might reduce cost which is why the faster option is less. Probably if it were a bigger item, the faster option would be either unavailable or way more expensive and the slower would be about the same price. Similar to how in the US the first class mail is very cheap.

Also, it's probably so expensive because expediting the customs process is mostly there just for rich people to skip the line kind of thing like in many other areas of society. There's almost always a backlog in customs combined with "antiterrorism" things like radiation detection, xray, pathogen detection, poison detection, etc., that is often done at random in large batches, but with expedited they often have to test every piece rather than rooms full of stuff. And routing is similar. They also can't wait to add your package to a larger batch of things when moving between various points along the way, so a lot of things are moved in smaller batches or direct courier. All of that makes it very expensive to move something very fast, no matter how small.

Yeah, "unnecessary" is the health insurance code word for "we can get away with not paying for it". Because it's executives and lawyers and not doctors that determine if something is "unnecessary". Sure they have doctors as scape goats, but they have specific instructions not written by medical professionals that they are required to follow. Unnecessary doesn't mean it won't save a person's suffering or life, it means it's more expensive than relieving the persons pain is worth or the person's life is worth (i.e. the likelihood that they would lose a lawsuit for significant damages if they die).

Mugshots are also designed to make people look bad because it used to be a way that criminals would use for self promotion. But if they look bad then it has the opposite effect making them seem more animalistic and thus more evil. Also often used in wanted posters if enough photos are available. This has been the case for long before photography was invented with drawings as well.

Otherwise, they'd look more like photo IDs, which have the same requirements and are bad compared to something framed specifically to flatter someone, but not as bad as mugshots. Doesn't help that most mugshots are taken after long, abusive "interrogation" sessions or other situations that exhaust them rather than immediately upon arrest, but that's on purpose.

But the tactic to use mugshots as self promotional got popular when photos first came around because if they could get in a good shot, it's not like the police could afford to take multiple. Film was expensive. And they were put in newspapers and such, so they spread around for free. Just look at the famous criminals of the Wild West era. So police doubled down on making sure the photos looked as bad as possible and it became a popular tactic to use against "famous" criminals. Now it's used against basically all criminals.

Unless the criminal is wealthy, like Trump. Then they can have all the money.

Yeah, but then anesthesiologists could then just say they can only work a certain amount of time because it costs them too much money in billing and appeals. Thus rushing a surgeon that then has a set time limit. Any time an insurance company makes a decision about what care a patient needs over the advice of doctors, it will result in problems. Sure there are going to be abuses, but instead of a blanket policy, it should be the responsibility of the insurance company to investigate fraud and waste.

I mean what other job do they have to spend money on but reducing fraud and waste? Oh wait, they spend money on software that is designed to deny claims, so they can blame the software for being overzealous and not the policies.

That was the whole point of the DMCA, though. Prevent bad publicity by claiming copyright infringement and companiea have to take down the content before they investigate any response. Any time a company doesn't do that they are risking their own necks. So usually they only ignore it if they know for sure it's bogus which requires that they spend the resources on a person reviewing every notice before the required time expires.

Good luck getting them to give you an answer at all to any of those questions. You're going to need to get a lawyer and spend a lot of money and time getting any response at all from anyone who actually works for the company, since the customer service doesn't have access to any of that information and they wouldn't be allowed to reveal it even of they did. It's an insurance system, not a social service system where you have some kind of rights.

Insurance companies are designed to find any reason possible not to pay a claim, whether it's homeowner's insurance, liability insurance, or any other type of insurance. And they have plenty of lawyers on staff so they're happy to make the lawsuit take long enough to cost you more than the claim is worth to you and it barely costs them anything.