😏 Amazon’s 5 secret clearance racks

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Happy Saturday, {{first_name | friend}}. Somewhere between that Indiana Jones VHS and a bunch of business cards from people who have since retired, your junk drawer is quietly hoarding gold in plain sight. Not pirate gold. Not “sell the family necklace” gold. But actual tiny bits of gold tucked inside old phones, connectors and circuit boards.

Recyclers call this “urban mining,” which sounds much cooler than “I found three dead chargers and a mystery SIM card.”

💰 Pound for pound, which holds the most gold? A) A ton of freshly mined gold ore, B) They’re all the same, C) A ton of dead cell phones or D) 10 circuit boards? Keep scrolling for the answer. It’s pure gold.

💥 Your hard drive is going to crash. Not if. When. Every photo, every document, every file gone. Data recovery costs $300 to $3,000, if techs can recover anything at all. That’s why I use Carbonite. Automatic. Silent. Save 50% and start protecting everything today.*

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🤯 WOW! Amazon quietly runs five separate discount sections (Resale, Outlet, Haul, Renewed and a coupon page) with markdowns up to 70%. None get home page billing, because full price pays the bills.

The Short Version: Bookmark Resale, Outlet and Renewed, search “Haul” in the app and use the &pct-off URL trick. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

This week, I went looking for a monitor and almost paid full price like a rookie. Then I remembered: Amazon’s home page is the showroom. The clearance racks are hidden in the back, and there are five of them.

Pro tip: After you click the links below, bookmark each so the savings are always one tap away. On your computer, hit Ctrl+D (Windows) or Cmd+D (Mac) and it's saved. On your iPhone, tap the Share button (the box with the arrow), then Add Bookmark. On Android, tap the three dots in Chrome, then the star. Two seconds now beats digging through your inbox later. Consider it a piggy bank for your browser.

Formerly Amazon Warehouse, this is where returned and open-box items land after inspection, at 30% to 70% off. Every item wears a condition label, from “Like New” (packaging’s rough, product’s perfect) down to “Acceptable” (works fine, looks like it’s been through something). 

You still get the 30-day return window, and most items ship Prime. Click here to start. Already eyeing something? Scroll down the product page to “Other Sellers,” and check for a used option at a lower price. I bought a boomerang on Amazon but only because of their 100% return policy.

Nothing used here. This is overstock and seasonal clearance from big-name brands, typically 30% to 70% off. Amazon doesn’t put it on the home page because full price pays the bills. 

Browse it at amazon.com/Outlet.

Amazon’s everything-under-$20 store, built to beat the ultra-cheap apps at their own game, without the sketchy shipping wait. Search “Haul” in the Amazon app. Quality varies, so read reviews, but for phone cases, cables and party stuff? 

Go to amazon.com/haul/store.

Professionally inspected refurbs (think iPads, Dysons, laptops) backed by the Renewed Guarantee: 90 days to get a replacement or refund if it’s not right. Check them out here.

Search “Amazon coupons” for digital clip-on coupons that stack with sale prices. And here’s my favorite URL magic trick: Run any Amazon search, then add &pct-off=50- to the end of the web address. Boom, only items 50% off or more. Change the number to taste.

Need some inspo? I rounded up the best finds from Amazon’s hidden aisles this week. No digging required.

Alexa Voice Remote Pro (22% off list price, $27): Lost your clicker? Say, “Alexa, find my remote,” and it rings. Backlit buttons make scrolling less squinty. Plus, it controls smart lights and Ring cameras.

Sony Bluetooth headphones (46% off, $38): Listen for up to 50 hours straight. Multipoint pairing lets you hop from phone to laptop in a tap. When you’re done, the ear cups swivel to fold flat.

Dryer vent cleaner kit (30% off, $7): Hidden lint is dangerous. Hook the hose onto almost any vacuum, and it gets the deepest fuzz zones before they can start a fire. Your energy bill might go down, too.

Keurig K-Mini Plus (41% off list price, $70): Short on counter space? This renewed coffee maker is barely wider than a mug. You can even use your own ground coffee or loose tea leaves.

Bamboo cutting boards (50% off, $25): I used that trick I showed you to find these reversible boards. Chop on one side, build a snack board on the other. The stand keeps the whole set neat.

🪜 Speaking of secrets: I bought an open-box ladder from the clearance section last month. Half price, works perfectly. It’s a step up from my old one.

🎯 Send this to someone who pays full price out of habit. Bless their cart.

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Marissa's best friend of 15 years stole her newborn's photos and played mom to strangers online, fake birth story and all. It's called "digital kidnapping," and Marissa tells us about the fallout.

Plus: a 12-year-old builds an AI receptionist, robots that clean your house AND dance at your wedding, and Sarah, who found love in Paris by switching her dating app location.

Also: a cop disguised as a bush catching bad drivers, Sam Altman wants AI helping raise your kids, the Snapchat joke that got a teacher arrested, $1 million salaries for Gen Z math geeks, a son who lost $250K+ to a romance scam, and a ventriloquist gunning for an AI job.

Watch now before everyone else is talking about it. 👇

▶️ “My best friend ‘digitally kidnapped’ my baby” →

Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:

🚘 Uber meets Orwell: That ride waiting in your driveway could be a police plate scanner. Internal decks show Flock Safety pitched gig companies on mounting mobile cameras to Uber and Lyft cars, creating a roaming surveillance fleet. Yep. They wanted to turn everyday rideshare drivers into a fleet of spies. The plan could capture cars near homes, schools and grocery stores for searchable police databases, without riders or neighbors agreeing. Call me crazy, but routine errands shouldn’t become a private espionage network. 

Privacy light broken: If you’ve been using Turbo VPN, update to version 3.7.0.0 or newer. Not tomorrow, like right now. The app, with over 500 million downloads, was leaking people’s addresses even while showing “connected,” which is why the company is rushing out this emergency fix. Update through the Microsoft Store > Library > Get updates.

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Google Maps will now order your lunch. The Ask Maps chat feature went global (150+ countries) and learned some nifty tricks. It can order food, book hotels with price comparisons and pull live bus and train times, just ask. It can even check your Gmail reservations to suggest things to do near your hotel. Your copilot officially takes lunch orders. Tip not included. 

💿 Counterfeit vinyl grooves: Get this. Someone is pressing computer-made background noise and AI songs onto vinyl and selling it like a collectible album. Reports from collectors and labels describe fake jazz, ambient tracks and lo-fi beats paired with made-up artist biographies on Amazon and Bandcamp. What a cross-generational grift. The scam works because vinyl feels tangible, nostalgic and trustworthy. If the musician has no real history, reviews or label trail, keep your money in your pocket. Real records are always a sound purchase.

(Starts at 7:37) AI flagged a teacher talking about one of her students. The FBI showed up to a school within an hour. Remember, what you type online never really disappears.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Some YouTube tutorials take five minutes to explain a two-minute fix. Tap the Settings cog > Playback speed > 1.25x to move things along. Working with both hands and missed a step? Right-click the video and choose Loop, so it automatically starts again. Because some instructions refuse to stick after one watch.

Phones don’t need the full 100: Keeping it maxed out on the charger every night adds wear to the battery. Set a cap. On iPhone, go to Settings > Battery > Charging > Charge Limit and select 90%. On Android, open Settings > Battery > Battery protection. A little less juice today could mean more battery life next year.

🏃🏻‍♀️‍➡️ The scale isn’t gaslighting you: Carpets can throw off the sensors, so move it onto a hard, level surface. If you weigh yourself again, wait at least 10 seconds, so it can reset properly. And folks, consider getting a smart scale. It estimates body fat and muscle mass, too. Sometimes the mirror changes before the number does.

Let Google answer “How far away are you?” Type your destination in Maps and start navigation. Swipe up, tap Share trip progress and choose whoever keeps checking in. They’ll see your live location, route and ETA until you arrive. Want someone to know exactly where you are without a trip? Tap your profile picture > Location sharing.

🔞 AI on movie patrol: Hosting the grandkids or planning a sleepover? Tell a chatbot film titles, the kids’ ages and anything you’d rather they not see. Ask it to flag questionable scenes and determine whether an adult should watch with them. Do this before everyone grabs the popcorn. Five seconds now beats one very awkward family movie night. More tips like this in my free Splash of AI newsletter every Thursday. 

After a stroke at 49 left James unable to speak in fluid sentences, Bland AI rebuilt his voice from only five seconds of old home-video audio.

The company surprised his family with an app that lets James type a message and have it spoken in his original voice. It’s a deeply personal soundboard that adds the pauses, breaths and stumbles polished AI voices usually scrub away.

Yes, it’s a PR play. It’s also hard to be cynical when a phone finally sounds like Dad again.

Check out the full mini-documentary here.

🎓 What you learned today: Amazon’s five tucked-away discount aisles can save you from paying sticker price, counterfeit vinyl is turning nostalgia into a sloppy scam, and AI voice cloning helped a stroke survivor sound like himself again. Not bad for one email. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to take family parties up a notch, using AI and a free puzzle builder to turn gossip, inside jokes and old grudges into a custom crossword that’ll get three generations laughing, arguing and actually talking.

The answer: C) A ton of dead cell phones. Yep, they’ve got roughly 100 times more gold. A ton of gold ore gives up a few grams of gold. A ton of old phones? Hundreds of grams. The EPA estimated that recycling 1 million cell phones recovers about 75 pounds of gold, 772 pounds of silver and over 35,000 pounds of copper. Your junk drawer is a tiny, very disorganized mine.

Here’s how to cash in (or at least clear out):

Never, ever the trash. Batteries in landfills leak and start fires. If it has no trade-in value, drop it at a certified e-waste recycler. You can find a drop-off spot right near you using Earth911’s Recycling Search. Old chargers and cables? Recyclers take those, too. The copper adds up.

🔱 Turns out your old phones really do have sentimental and mineral value. You could say they’re worth their weight in, well, you know. Stay golden.

💻 Imagine turning on your computer tomorrow to a black screen. Baby photos, tax returns, everything gone. Hard drives have a 100% failure rate eventually. I don’t gamble with my memories, and neither should you. Carbonite backs up every file automatically, silently, without you touching a thing. Save 50% right now.* 

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, @usebland via X

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