Best Buy cuts elite benefits! Perhaps a free BusinessWeek subscription would ease the sting?

BEST BUY REWARDZONE CUTS BENEFITS: This just arrived in my inbox last night–apparently Best Buy is rolling out their new rewards program:

Dear PFDigest,

Thank you for being a loyal Reward Zone^® member. I’m pleased to announce that after a decade, the program you love is getting even better. We’re reinventing the Reward Zone program as My Best Buy™ — delivering more rewards, more exclusives and an improved mobile experience.

Uh oh. Without reading any further, my first thought was, “I bet ‘more rewards’ is corporatespeak for ‘less rewards’.”

As one of our most valued Reward Zone Premier Silver members the change is easy — you’re already enrolled in our highest rewards level: My Best Buy Elite Plus. In fact all of your account information remains the same, including your member number, point balance and any available reward certificates. Even the points you get with every purchase stay the same. Also, Elite Plus members like you enjoy the following benefits:

• 25% Point Bonus on top of the 1 point for every $1 you already get…

There it is! Premier Silver members used to get a half-point bonus (effectively an additional 1%), whereas now it’s a quarter-point. So add that to the 5% you get for the Best Buy credit card (fortunately, that hasn’t changed) and it’s 5.5% instead of 6%. The spending level required for the highest tier is now $3,500, whereas it was $2,500 before.

None of which is a big deal, of course. Best Buy has a business to run, so they have to do what they have to do. Obviously I’d prefer they not cut benefits, but I’m sure there will be more Best Buy deals in the future.

(Incidentally, if you happen to have any purchases to make there and don’t want to bother with a cash/points portal, I’ve got a Best Buy affiliate link for you to click on.)

FREE BUSINESSWEEK SUBSCRIPTION: Via My Money Blog, here’s a link for a free subscription to BusinessWeek. The subscription is via something called RewardsGold.com, and apparently the link I’m passing on to you is a page which gives you either a free subscription or 5,000 RewardsGold points. All I did was enter my info and it told me I’d have my magazine in 8-10 weeks. The whole thing seems slightly sketchy, but the downside–more junk mail, perhaps?–is minimal.

INTERNING IS FOR SUCKERS: Apparently free labor is all the rage these days among cutting edge companies! Priceonomics casts a skeptical eye on the internship phenomenon:

Internships are a means to hire employees for no wages. Maurice Pianko, an attorney and founder of Intern Justice, told New York Magazine that he became interested in the internship issue after reading job postings where “so many descriptions sounded similar to a salaried position, except on the last line it said ‘unpaid.’”

Internships are the scourge of some 50% of college graduates – not just of privileged twentysomethings whose parents support them. A survey by Intern Bridge found that students and graduates with parents making $40,000-$80,000 a year were most likely to work an unpaid internship, whereas the children of parents making over $120,000 were least likely.

Obviously, Disney’s going to be involved with this racket:

Disney runs one of the world’s largest internship programs. Each year, between 7,000 and 8,000 college students and recent graduates work full-time, minimum-wage, menial internships at Disney World.

The interns work entirely at the company’s will, subject to a raft of draconian policies, without sick days or time off, without grievance procedures, without guarantees of workers’ compensation or protection against harassment or unfair treatment. Twelve-hour shifts are typical, many of them beginning at 6 a.m. or stretching past midnight. Interns sign up without knowing what jobs they’ll do or the salaries they’ll be paid (though it typically hovers right near minimum wage).

Bottom line: unless you’re volunteering with a charity, don’t work unless somebody’s paying you to do so.

Internships are not a good way to land a job. One survey found that graduating seniors with unpaid internship experience did no better than seniors without internship experience at finding a job. Another concluded that a measly 17% of surveyed students received a job offer after their internship. The exception is paid internships, which did lead to job offers.

THE PEOPLE WHO RUN POWERBALL HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR: You may have heard that the Powerball lottery is up to $400 million for Wednesday’s drawing. While checking out the odds and the payoffs, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the wacky letters page, wherein Powerball management prints some of the strange correspondence they’ve received over the years as well as Powerball’s responses. For example:

FROM Debora W: i don’t remember my powerball numbers. my name is debora w—-

The number is on your Powerball ticket. Your ticket is under the seat of your car, between the seat and the car door.

And my personal favorite:

FROM DAVID R: The cord of my power ball has become tangled inside the unit. I have removed the protective rubber belt and two baby screws and the lid. I can’t pry the two halves apart. Please help me solve this problem.

I would recommend running down to your local convenience store to buy $10 worth of Powerball lottery tickets. Then, if you win, you can buy a new one. You might also try this site for help.

http://www.powerballs.com

[two days later]

Your advice is of limited use. Please put me in touch with your firm’s technical department if it has one.

I am the technical department here. Really, try the link (note the “s”). That is the company that sells the gyro Powerball. We sell Powerball lottery tickets here.

I will be buying exactly one ticket for Wednesday’s drawing. Sadly, my local gas station stopped accepting credit cards for lottery tickets, which makes the expected value of the lottery ticket purhcase even more negative, but oh well.