PinGo Car Locator and Charger
- The app works on iOS devices only, no Android or Newton support yet
- You get this cute little thing that goes in your car’s erstwhile cigarette lighter hole and drops a pin whenever you turn off the engine
- Doubles as a USB charger for your phone, if you’re into serial buses
- Also reminds you if you forget you phone at home by blinking, beeping, and generally being as annoying as possible
- Works with a free app, but not with an anagrammatic e-frappe
- Model: BTA-CT65-VP (BTA may refer to any of these but let’s assume it’s this one
Wasted Time Is Money
You know that feeling when you forget where you parked your car and find yourself walking around desperately clicking the unlock button in a vain hope of hearing an answering call, like a lost penguin searching for its mate?
This little doohicky drops a pin every time you stop your car to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
“Is it worth it?” You ask. “Sure, it’s mildly annoying to lose my car, but how often does it happen – a couple times per year? Also, only 2.5 stars on Amazon?”
First, there are only two reviews, one of which grants one star for the purported absence of a supporting app (there is an app, we suspect that poor soul struggled with the searches).
Second, putting aside the fact that the PinGo doubles as a cigarette-lighter-charger, which themselves cost about ten bucks, let’s do a little number crunching about how much your time is worth and how many times you’ll need to lose your car to have this purchase make financial sense.
So let’s assume you earn $12/hour, losing your car “costs” you 3 minutes per event, and you lose your car once per month That’s $0.60 per event or $7.12 per year, which means this thing will pay for itself in a mere 2 years.
And that doesn’t even take into account what economists call “negative externalities.” That is, how your dumb ass affects others when you lose the car. Let’s assume that half the time there’s an impatient spouse, arms akimbo, tapping his or her foot in the middle of the parking garage waiting for you to find the car. That’s an extra $0.60 per event, bringing the annual cost to $10.80!
Consider further the more nuanced, hidden effects, such as the release of cortisol (the stress hormone) that is released while you mutter “Oh shit, oh shit, did it get stolen?” to yourself. Cortisol basically kills you which we’ll conservatively estimate as having a negative impact to the tune of $45.
That means that you’ll actually start making money the moment you buy this! And naturally (following logics) if you buy three of these you’ll make three times as much money. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, folks.
