пʼятниця, 26 вересня 2014 р.
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Pharmacy chain CVS charged about 11,000 customers who have health insurance small copays when they picked up some recent prescriptions. What’s wrong with that? Those prescriptions were for generic contraceptive pills, which should be dispensed with no copay at all under the federal Affordable Care Act. Now those customers are due a refund.
CVS says that the erroneous copays were due to a glitch in the system that involved customers of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, an insurer in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The issue first came to public attention because of a letter from California Congresswoman Jackie Speier. One of her staff members in Washington had to fork over an erroneous $20 copay, and she sent a letter about the matter to the CEO of CVS.
“I am concerned that most women who are likely not familiar with their rights under the ACA may go without this essential family planning service that is supposed to be guaranteed to them under law,” she wrote. Not everyone is a Congressional staffer, after all.
For now, the problem appears to be limited to one insurance company and one pharmacy chain, but Rep. Speier’s office has received some complaints from her California district about similar problems, and CVS is investigating any complaints that it receives.
CVS says that they will issue checks to affected customers in early October, and customers of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield are no longer being charged copays they don’t owe.
After Glitch, CVS Gives 11,000 Birth Control Refunds [Kaiser Health News]
CVS illegally charging women for generic birth control [UPI]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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Normally, service dogs are allowed to go anywhere that their owners are, including taxis, stores, and restaurants. Technically, a business owner can ask an animal to leave, but only if the dog isn’t housebroken or is being disruptive in some other kind of doggy way.
When the family visited this Indian restaurant in South Sacramento, they were asked to leave. Well, the dog was. “No dog. Get out. Just get out,” he recounted to the TV station. They decided to investigate for themselves. Instead of attaching a camera to the same customer, they sent in their own blind guy/service dog team. They were asked to leave, but pushed back by quoting the relevant parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It turns out that the restaurant’s owner and staff simply weren’t familiar with the laws surrounding service dogs, and didn’t know that there are circumstances under which dogs have to be allowed inside. That could be an expensive lesson: the kicked-out customer could have sued them for not allowing him to bring the dog inside.
Call Kurtis Investigates: Sacramento Restaurant Denies Blind Man’s Service Dog [CBS Sacramento]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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The Tampa Bay Times reports the award was made after a jury ruled U-Haul infringed on PODS’ trademarks, causing confusing and hurting business for the company.
Clearwater-based PODS delivers containers to homes and businesses to be filled and transported to storage centers.
PODS sued U-Haul International in U.S. District Court in Tampa back in 2012 alleging that U-Haul “improperly and unlawfully” used the PODS trademark on its website as a way to divert sales. The company sought an estimated $170 million.
At the time the suit was filed officials with U-Haul say the company used the word pod to describe its U-Box product.
However, the jury found that U-Haul unjustly gained from mentioning the term in its marketing and advertising materials and started using the work only after PODS became a prominent business.
The ruling in PODS’ favor was a significant win over “genericide,” over “genericide,” the term used to describe what happens when a trademarked product morphs from a single product identified under a name to an entire product category. such as happened with aspirin, trampoline and cellophane.
In all, the jury awarded PODS about $46 million in damages and another $16 million in profits attributable to U-Haul using the word pods.
An attorney for PODS tells the Times that based on the verdict the company plans to seek an injunction to get U-Haul to stop using pods and pods.
It was unclear if U-Haul plans to appeal the ruling.
PODS wins $62 million award in trademark infringement lawsuit against U-Haul [Tampa Bay Times]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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Comcast has an image problem… mostly because its customer service is consistently ranked among the worst — not just of cable companies, but of all customer-facing businesses in the U.S. So maybe that’s not so much an image problem as it is a systemic rot that has been allowed to fester because the company has virtually no competition. So how to deal with this problem? Promote someone and claim that he’s going the answer to all your problems.
Kabletown announced today that it has promoted Charlie Herrin (who looks kind of like a laboratory hybrid of Wings’ Tim Daly and Thirtysomething’s Peter Horton) to be the company’s Senior VP of Customer Experience.
“Our customers deserve the best experience every time they interact with us,” writes Comcast Cable president Neil “no, it’s not Smith” Smit. “While we’ve made progress, we need to do a better job to make sure those interactions are excellent… from the moment a customer orders a new service, to the installation, to the way we communicate with them, to how we respond to any issues.”
That all sounds great Neil. Why didn’t you think of doing any of that for the last few decades while you gobbled up smaller cable companies without raising alarm bells at the FCC?
“The way we interact with our customers – on the phone, online, in their homes – is as important to our success as the technology we provide,” continues Smit, ignoring the fact that Comcast does everything it can to get you off the phone, uses scripted online chat that is hard to distinguish from a machine, and rarely shows up to your house when it’s supposed to. “Put simply, customer service should be our best product.”
Again, no duh.
The manure-spreading continues.
“Our customers deserve the best and we need to work harder to earn their trust and their business every day by exceeding their expectations,” writes Smit, again glossing over the fact that Comcast customers may indeed deserve the best, but they probably aren’t going to get it, at least in markets where there is no competing service for pay-TV and broadband.
Without competition, Comcast has no reason to actually back up this “we love our customers” sentiment. What are you going to do, switch to slow DSL service from your local phone company that hasn’t maintained its copper wire network in years? Or maybe you can get wireless broadband and pay the same amount as Xfinity for 1/70th the amount of data each month.
In spite of what Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have you believe, those are not alternatives.
“Transformation isn’t going to happen overnight,” admits Smit, in the post’s first real sign of anything resembling humility or honesty. “In fact, it may take a few years before we can honestly say that a great customer experience is something we’re known for. But that is our goal and our number one priority … and that’s what we are going to do.”
And that’s apparently where Herrin comes in.
In addition to being a “partner” with the heads of other groups, like customer service, technical operations, sales, marketing, training and development, and product innovation, Herrin is tasked with the unenviable task of listening to “feedback from customers as well as our employees to make sure we are putting our customers at the center of every decision we make.”
Herrin’s even got a pair of Emmy awards (who doesn’t?) gathering dust next to Comcast’s two Golden Poo statues for Worst Company In America. We had no idea they gave Emmys for this sort of thing, but Herrin got his back in 2011 for the Xfinity TV iPad app and another in 2013 for the X1 user interface.
The only way that Comcast will truly begin to treat customers better is when they stand to lose those customers. But rather than fight proactively to keep those subscribers by providing better service, Comcast would rather lobby against municipal broadband and exploit loopholes in net neutrality rules to squeeze tolls out of high-bandwidth content companies like Netflix that directly compete with Comcast’s pay-TV service but rely on its Xfinity broadband to reach consumers.
If Comcast truly believed that customers were the most important thing, it would welcome competition and show that its product would still be bought even after people were given a choice.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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Dunkin’ Donuts decided consumers weren’t getting enough coffee in their coffee, so they’re now offering coffee-flavored granola bars.
There’s obviously some kind of Frankenstein-like science experiment happening at the nation’s coffee and donut shops. First Starbucks began testing a beer-flavored coffee, and now Dunkin’ Donuts is pedaling a coffee-flavored granola bar. What happened to regular coffee and breakfast items? Are they just not enough anymore?
The Los Angeles Times reports that Dunkin’ Donuts is venturing into the protein bar market with its new coffee-flavored granola bar; because you can’t have enough strong coffee flavor in the morning, can you?
The new Dunkin’ Go Bar, a pre-packaged chewy granola bar, was designed to taste like the chain’s Original Blend Coffee.
Go Bars will be available in select Dunkin’ stores nationwide starting Monday.
And don’t worry about heading to the office with overpowering coffee breath for much longer. Dunkin’ reports it is partnering with Wrigley Foodservice to offer Orbit gum and Altoids mints starting October 1.
New granola bars at Dunkin’ Donuts. And of course they’re coffee-flavored [The Los Angeles Times]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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Holiday time is shopping time in America, and millions of families turn to Amazon to get their gifts. But last year, Santa’s sleigh had some trouble getting where it needed to be on time: last-minute buying, bad weather, and snafus at UPS and FedEx meant plenty of presents were still in transit when kids went looking under the tree in the morning. Some Christmas delivery miracles occurred, but Amazon still had to issue plenty of apologies, refunds, discounts, and Prime extensions. But Amazon is determined not to see a repeat in 2014, if their year of planning and building pans out.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports on the extensive planning that’s been going on at Amazon in order to make sure every customer gets their packages of holiday cheer on time. Even Amazon, as large and diverse a company as they are, can’t do much about winter storms or natural disasters — but they can build flexibility and redundancy to deal with pretty much everything else.
And that’s what they’ve been doing, as they open new facilities around the country and the world. In addition to 38 new fulfillment centers (i.e. giant warehouses full of stuff) Amazon has open around the country, they’ve opened 15 “sortation centers” to go with.
These smaller (but still huge) facilities exist for, well, sorting. Instead of having every package go straight to a shipping partner, like UPS, FedEx, or the Postal Service, Amazon instead sorts them by ZIP code first. That allows them flexibility if something goes awry. For example, if UPS were to experience major delays in one region, Amazon would know which packages to hand over to another shipper instead.
The online retailing behemoth is also exploring alternatives that don’t involve the big shipping companies at all, BusinessWeek adds. In a handful of cities, particularly Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Amazon’s been experimenting with their own delivery fleet. Forget the man in brown: your Amazon package arrives at your door in an Amazon truck with an Amazon driver.
The CEO of the company that did the research analysis explained to BusinessWeek that last year, “UPS was a single point of failure. Amazon was so married to them. Now if they get into a situation where five days into the holidays and UPS says ‘no mas,’” the sortation system gives them flexibility to work with the situation.
Amazon also tries to avoid bottlenecks with the big three shipping organizations by working with a number of smaller, regional delivery and courier services, especially near warehouses. (Yours truly sees the LaserShip van drop off a dozen Amazon boxes to neighbors nearly every morning.) These companies are also not flawless, but still provide flexible options that Amazon can choose to use or not to use depending on the circumstance.
Of course, these new warehouses are not evenly dotted around the country. Residents of the rural west are mostly out of luck, but Amazon shoppers in the major cities of the West Coast, up and down the Mississipi, and especially in the Northeast Corridor are fairly likely to live near one. But there’s always something: even living next door to an Amazon facility won’t spare you from some deepy questionable packaging.
Amazon’s Grand Plan to Avoid Holiday Delivery Snafus Again [Bloomberg Businessweek]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Kate Cox via Consumerist
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Generally when you think of a group of customers getting sick while visiting a restaurant, your mind automatically goes to the food. But that’s not always the case, as evidenced by a recent pepper spray incident at a Sarasota Panera.
WTSP-TV reports that four people were taken to the hospital for respiratory illness after someone set off a can of pepper spray inside a local Panera restaurant.
Police officials say a 16-year-old boy came forward and admitted to spraying the substance. He allegedly told officers that he didn’t know what it was or that it would spread throughout the restaurant.
Investigators tell WTSP that the incident appears to have been an accident.
Pepper spray sickens Sarasota Panera diners [WTSP-TV]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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At the time the acquisition was announced, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal pointed out that General Mills’ overall business was growing 1% per year, while sales in its “Small Planet Foods” organic cereals and snacks division grew 6%. General Mills already owns other prominent organic food brands, and Annie’s fits into that portfolio nicely. Yet customers worry that the new owners will change the brand’s standards.
General Mills’ stated position on GMO labeling is that they will label their products if there’s a uniform national label requirement, but they oppose state labeling initiatives. The company’s campaigning against GMO labeling on a state-by-state basis has earned them the wrath of people who want to limit their exposure to genetically modified food.
The company insists that nothing will change.
Of course, the CEO of Annie’s would say that even if the new parent company had nefarious plans, but the truth is that organic food is a growing part of the market, and the brand’s loyal customers and credibility are exactly why General Mills paid so much for the company.
Can General Mills overcome the Annie’s acquisition backlash? [Bakery and Snacks]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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As you might have heard, a fire — apparently set by a disgruntled employee — at an Illinois air traffic control center early this morning has resulted in more than 1,300 flights being canceled in and out of Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports. If you want to get a sense of how badly this screwed up everyone’s day, this short video will do that for you.
The above clip, captures just those people waiting in the customer service line to rebook for one airline at one terminal at O’Hare this morning. It doesn’t include all the people trying to rebook travel over the phone or online, or who just gave up and went back home or to a hotel.
And things had to be even worse at Midway, where more than 70% of outbound flights were canceled today. Since Southwest uses Midway as a major hub, it canceled all flights in and out of that airport today, and had to cancel more than 400 flights nationwide as a result.
The Chicago Tribune reports that flights are slowly resuming, and at a reduced rate, but the FlightAware.com Misery Map is still decidedly red for the Windy City area right now:
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is a collection of eight songs and a video for which Yorke is charging the relatively low price of six dollars. He’s also giving away one song, “Brain in a Bottle,” for free as a teaser.
But it’s not really the dollar value that makes the release newsworthy. It’s the use of a BitTorrent bundle to deliver the music.
Basically, after the first group of customers buys and downloads the album, they will then begin seeding the files so that future buyers will be getting their downloads from those original downloaders, and then sharing again with subsequent buyers. It effectively decentralizes the downloading process and reduces costs for the artist.
In this case, BitTorrent says that 90% of the $6 price goes to Yorke; significantly more than he would have received if he’d had to rely on a digital distributor or host and manage the downloads on his own.
“If it works well, it could be an effective way of handing some control of Internet commerce back to the people who are creating the work,” explains Yorke in a statement, “enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves.”
One issue that Yorke probably won’t face, but could cause trouble for smaller artists who try this format is having their work disappear from torrents.
If at some point people stop seeding the files, then people who want to buy the music may be out of luck. It’s akin to the old retail problem of CDs, tapes, and albums going out of print; something that isn’t supposed to happen in the digital age.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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The mere 10 minutes I’ve spent inside an Anthropologie store was enough to last me multiple years. But consumers who can’t get enough of the shabby-chic chain might welcome with open arms the thought of spending three hours browsing. Well, your wish may soon be coming true if the chain’s owners get their way.
Bloomberg reports that Urban Outfitters Inc. plans to create an atmosphere inside Anthropologie stores where customers can hang out for hours at a time – because everyone wants to chill in a place where everything you see is for sale and sales clerks ask you if you need help every five minutes.
The plan includes opening 25 to 50 new Anthropologie stores, some of which will be three times larger than current locations. Those super-sized stores will expand offerings of home goods, wedding items, beauty products and intimate apparel in an effort to entice customers to stay a lot longer.
Additionally, the stores will champion a more social component by offering dining and salon services.
Focus groups that tested a prototype of the new-format stores indicated the plan works, with customers staying for two to three hours compared with the current average stay of an hour.
Bloomberg reports that the new, larger stores won’t be an addition to the company’s already 178 locations, they will simply replace existing ones.
Officials with Anthropologie say the new focus of bigger is better is in line with their target customers.
“She wants more — more products, more of the world-class experience we’ve introduced,” David McCreight, CEO for the chain, said in a statement. “Just like Apple and their new iPhone, we truly believe bigger is indeed better, and in our case, necessary to expand our reach.”
Urban Outfitters to Supersize Anthropologie Stores [Bloomberg]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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We haven’t had a chance to test the service yet, but the folks at WFMY-TV in North Carolina tried it out, with mixed results.
The reporters first made a list of 15 items that they knew in advance were on sale at other stores in the area. Since Walmart doesn’t provide a list of exactly which stores are used for price-matching, they stuck to major chains like Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Big Lots, Target, Family Dollar, and Walgreens.
Then they went shopping at Walmart, found all 15 items, for which they paid $36.24. Meanwhile, the total they would have paid if they’d bought each item at its cheaper price at the various other stores was $30.39, a difference of $5.85.
So back at home, they went to Walmart’s Savings Catcher site and entered the receipt number. A few days later — the process takes upwards of 72 hours — they found that most of their items had resulted in refund, but not everything.
In all, 11 of the 15 items turned up on Savings Catcher for less than they paid at Walmart. One item was even found at a significantly lower price than what had been expected, so that was a plus.
But then there were the remaining items that didn’t turn up lower prices. Savings Catcher claimed it couldn’t find a lower price on one of the four items, and it simply couldn’t identify the three others.
When it was all said and done, the service found $4.83 in savings, but left $1.02 unaccounted for. And this was just for a relatively small transaction of $36. A larger order may have resulted in even more items that didn’t turn up savings at competing stores.
Based on just this one test, it seems like Savings Catcher might be something worth trying. After all, you’ve already spent the money; why not see if you can get any of it back. And if you do shop regularly at Walmart, then the restriction of getting your refund on a Walmart gift card is probably not going to annoy you too much.
That said, in addition the 2-3 day wait time to get results from Savings Catcher, there are numerous restrictions on which products are eligible (it appears to be limited to grocery and health/beauty items) and limits on how long you can wait (receipts older than 7 days are ineligible).
If anyone has been trying Savings Catcher and wants to share their feedback, let us know at tips@consumerist.com.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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Flying is painful enough as it is. Between arduous lines at security and ever-shrinking legroom, passengers are already plenty on-edge. Adding cell phone chatter to an already-tense high-altitude situation could be a recipe for disaster, and 77 members of Congress agree.
Late last year, the FCC started mulling a rule change that would allow passengers to chatter away at twenty thousand feet. This week, the lawmakers all signed on to a letter (PDF) that went to the FCC as well as the Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, and Justice urging them not to let that happen, Ars Technica reports.
In the letter, the lawmakers cite “significant concerns about the safety, security and comfort implications of potential voice and wireless technology use” on planes. But the FAA has said that our phones don’t pose a technological safety threat to aircraft. The electromagnetic output from a phone doesn’t interfere with normal aircraft operations. Physically speaking, it’s perfectly safe to call the office from the plane you’re flying away from it on.
So what, specifically, is the safety concern? It’s not with the phones: it’s with the people who use them, and the rest of us who have to listen.
The fights passengers get into, the lawmakers argue, are genuine air safety concerns. And adding phones into the mix will only make it worse:
Passengers making voice calls during flight could impact the ability of crewmembers — flight attendants and pilots — to perform their jobs, keep passengers safe and the cabin environment calm. Arguments in an aircraft cabin already start over mundane issues, like seat selection, reclining seats and overhead bin space, and the volume and pervasiveness of voice communications would only serve to exacerbate and escalate these disputes.
The letter continues that because an airplane is, well, an airplane, passengers can’t “remove themselves from loud or unwanted conversations,” and “disputes may ensue.” That does seem likely.
“Instead of focusing on safety-related tasks,” the lawmakers write, “flight attendants may be forced to intervene in or mediate disputes between passengers on appropriate content and volume of voice calls, thus distracting their attention from other passengers and job responsibilities.”
Although it feels almost ridiculous to point to “people are going to be inconsiderate jerks to each other and make tense situations worse” as an actual safety concern, there’s definitely some real truth there. Passenger bad behavior already leads to a significant number of altercations, assaults, and flight diversions. Failing to think about the flying public’s very strong concerns about personal boundaries and passenger behavior, when making a rule about phone use, would be a recipe for disaster.
Although the FCC may move to allow voice calls on flights, the Department of Transportation has been working on their own proposal for new rules that would ban in-air calling. They are expected to make a public announcement about that rule late this year, which would put it on track to become final in the first half of 2015.
Earlier this year, representatives in the House proposed a bill that would ban the use of cell phones in the air, if agency rules failed to do so. Several of the bill’s co-sponsors were also among the group who sent this week’s letter.
In-flight phone calls would make air travel dangerous, lawmakers say [Ars Technica]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Kate Cox via Consumerist
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Every retailer has its own specialty when it comes to holiday mashup decorations. At Hobby Lobby, it’s beautifully decorated evergreen trees with a fall theme. Target has settled on a holiday specialty, and that is “Nightmare Before Christmas” displays that combine elements of the two holidays. We’re pretty sure that it’s accidental, but maybe it’s not. We have to admit, though, when you see these displays in the wild at Target, they sort of work.
Reader Paula spotted this mashup at a Target store in Arizona, and submitted it to the Consumerist Flickr pool.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas,” of course, refers to the 1993 Tim Burton stop-motion animation film about the mysterious beings in charge of our holidays, and what happened when the residents of Halloweentown kidnapped Santa Claus and put themselves in charge of Christmas, therefore guaranteeing that goth-leaning young adults would buy piles of Disney-licensed Christmas merchandise for decades to come. It’s available on Netflix streaming, and you should watch it.
Or you could skip that and just check out the live-action version at your local Target store.
PREVIOUSLY:
Target’s Accidental Nightmare Before Christmas Looks Kind Of Cool
morez срочный автовыкуп by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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It’s probably safe to say that the majority of safety recalls issued in 2014 revolved round issues with either ignition switches or airbags. The latter is the reason for Ford’s latest recall of nearly 850,000 vehicles.
According to The Detroit News, Ford issued a recall for 847,000 model year 2013 to 2014 Ford C-MAX, Fusion, Escape and Lincoln MKZ for an electrical glitch that can prevent the airbags from deploying in the event in a crash.
If a short occurs in the restraints control module the airbag warning indicator will illuminate. But depending on the location of the short circuit, the deployable restoration may not function as intended in the event of a crash, Ford reports.
Additionally, the short circuit may also affect the function of other systems including the vehicle’s stability control.
Today’s recall marks the 12th for the 2013 Ford Escape. The last recall involving the Escape was issued just last month for a poor electrical connection that could cause the engine to unexpectedly lose power or stall.
Officials with Ford said the company is unaware of any crashes or injuries related to the airbag issues.
Owners of affected vehicles will be notified later this month and dealers will repair the issue.
Ford recalls 850,000 vehicles for electronic glitch [The Detroit News]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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While the Military Lending Act aims to protect military personnel and their families from predatory lenders’ often unsavory lending practices that include high interest rates and excessive fees, it still allows for clever lenders to get their hooks into borrowers. That’s why the Obama Administration and the Department of Defense announced a proposed overhaul of the rules – much to consumer advocates’ delight.
According to the DoD, the proposed changes [PDF] would work to reduce predatory lending practices, expand protections provided to service members, close loopholes and help ensure military families receive proper protections.
The proposed changes include implementing a cap of 36% on the annual percentage rate of interest charged for credit products, including credit cards, that were once exempt under the MLA.
While the 36% interest rate cap isn’t new, it was previously only implemented for payday and auto-title loans and tax refund anticipation loans.
In the past, lenders were often able to evade the rate cap requirements by offering slightly longer loans, or more expensive loans that weren’t covered under the former Act.
The revamped Act expands the definition of “consumers credit” covered by the regulation and brings any closed- or open-end loan within scope of the regulation. The rule would only exclude loans secured by real estate or a purchase-money loan such as those used to buy cars.
If the proposal passes muster, creditors would also be required to provide military borrowers with additional disclosures, including a statement that the service member should seek other options than high-cost credit.
Additionally, creditors would be prohibited from requiring service members to submit to arbitration, waive their rights under the services members’ Civil Relief Act, or impose onerous legal notice requirements as a result of taking out a loan.
Consumer advocates were quick to champion the potential changes.
The National Consumer Law Center released a statement [PDF] commending the DoD for expanding protections to cover sometimes overlooked predatory lending products.
“We applaud the Department of Defense for working to close loopholes that lenders have used to exploit servicemembers through high-interest loans and predatory financial products,” Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center, says in the statement. “Servicemembers and their families are easy prey for unscrupulous lenders: many are young and have little experience with financial matters, receive regular but low pay, and have frequent moves and the expense of setting up new homes.”
Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, released a statement saying the proposed rule changes would “end the debt trap.”
“Today’s proposed rules are clear and comprehensive and will protect against debt traps that undermine the financial security of service members and their families,” he stated.
The proposed regulation amendments will be published in the Federal Register for public comment. Comments will be accepted for 60 days before finalization of the rules.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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I’ve heard any number of horror stories from female friends who have been harassed by overly flirtatious cab drivers — even dated a woman was kicked out of a cab when she told she driver she had a boyfriend — but the experience of one Uber passenger in Florida goes far beyond making salacious or sexist comments.
The Smoking Gun reports on an Uber driver who was hired to pick up a female passenger in the Orlando area and drive her to a bar to meet her boyfriend.
But things started going badly right from the start, the passenger told police. The says the driver not only began to take a circuitous route to the destination, but he also kept remarking how “attractive” and “pretty” she looked.
Then she claims that the driver stopped the car and placed his hand inside her tank top. Since she wasn’t wearing a bra, that means his hand went right onto her breast.
The passenger says she yelled at the driver, “Do not touch my boobs or I will hit you in the face!” She also apparently recorded portions of this dispute on her phone because she was wary of the driver’s behavior.
When the driver dropped him off, she asked for a business card, which he gave her. She then told her boyfriend what had occurred.
She later identified the driver to the police in a photographic lineup, and he came into the police station a few days after the alleged incident to be interviewed.
While speaking to the police, he explained that the passenger was wearing a tank top without a bra and that in his birth nation of Egypt, if a woman dresses like that “it means she [is] asking for it.”
That’s when the police arrested the driver for battery, a misdemeanor charge. He was released after posting $500 bond, but TSG reports that Uber has suspended his account.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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What should consumers look for in their freezers? The affected chicken products are frozen pre-cooked chicken breast strips in a 3.5-pound resealable bag. They’ll have the establishment number P-33901 in the USDA inspection emblem, and the “best by” date is August 15, 2015. The strips were packed on August 4, 2014.
While frozen pre-cooked products like these might say “ready to eat” on the package, the U.S. Department of Agriculture still advises consumers to reheat such products “until steaming hot” to kill any pathogens in cases exactly like this one.
The USDA doesn’t know of any illnesses that can be traced directly to any chicken that made it onto retail shelves and consumer plates. That doesn’t mean that no one has become ill: it just means that no illnesses have been conclusively matched from samples of bodily fluids taken from a person sick with listeriosis to the chicken strips, with evidence that the person ate the chicken. If that’s gross, well, foodborne illness is gross by its nature.
Listeriosis can be a serious and potentially fatal illness, which is particularly dangerous to the very old, the very young, people with compromised immune systems, and pregnant women. Early symptoms of infection can resemble the flu, and sometimes include diarrhea. Infection can occur up to two months after consuming contaminated food.
If you have any questions about the recall or about chicken you bought that may be affected, give Foster Farms a call at (800) 338-8051.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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The well-trained scam antenna of an employee at a Safeway in Rockville, MD, went up when she recently spotted a couple of shoppers trying to get $4,000 worth of prepaid debit cards.
When she asked them about why they were putting so much money on the cards, the customers said they’d been contacted by IRS agents who claimed they had to pay thousands of dollars right away in order to stop an IRS investigation.
“I said, ‘Don’t buy it, it’s a scam,’” the Safeway cashier tells WJLA-TV [via Credit.com]. “They had a whole wad of money like you wouldn’t believe. And they said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’”
Unfortunately for the couple, they had already been scammed out of $3,000 by the bogus IRS agents, meaning somewhere there’s a cashier who didn’t notice the obvious red flags that a scam was in progress.
More and more retail employees are being trained to identify the telltale signs of these tricks, which often require victims to pay in either wire transfers or prepaid cards.
If the IRS believes you owe it money, you will get a bill in the mail. The agency will not call you and tell you that you need to pay ASAP and that the only way you can do so is with a reloadable debit card, nor will they ask you for credit or debit card information over the phone. The IRS will also not threaten to have you arrested for lack of payment.
If you get one of these calls, hang up. If you aren’t sure it’s a scam because you do actually owe taxes, call the IRS at 1-800 829-1040.
If you know you don’t owe taxes, report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1-800 366-4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
Regardless of whether you owe or not, you should file a scam complaint with the Federal Trade Commission via the online FTC Complaint Assistant.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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Here are eight of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.
Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Want to see your pictures on our site? Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.
morez срочный автовыкуп by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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The decision to take out a reverse mortgage should never be taken lightly, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to make sure consumers are considering all of the perks and numerous pitfalls.
The CFPB updated its reverse mortgage guide [PDF] to reflect recent changes that may make the often risky process of taking out a reverse mortgage a fraction less burdensome for borrowers and their families.
Reverse mortgages allow a borrower, 62 years or older, to convert the equity on their home into a lump sum or monthly payments. Generally, those funds are not required to be paid back until the borrower moves or dies.
In the past, when a named reverse mortgage borrower died their surviving spouse or family was often left to repay the funds in a short period of time or lose their home.
According to the CFPB, recent changes mean a non-borrowing spouse may be able to continue to live in the home under certain conditions, even after the spouse who signed the loan passes away. However, the non-borrowing spouse will still stop receiving funds from the reverse mortgage after his or her spouse dies.
The only option for a surviving spouse to continue to receive monthly payments or use the existing line of credit is if the couple takes out the reverse mortgage together in the first place.
A second change in reverse mortgage rules concerns the amount of funds consumers can take up front.
First-year payout limits are meant to encourage borrowers to make their money last longer. In the past, consumers who took a full lump-sum payment in the first year often outlived their funds; creating financial vulnerability.
While borrowers can still take out lump-sum single payments, the CFPB urges borrowers to consider the monthly payment or line of credit options before choosing to get a lump-sum.
The CFPB warns that while the recent reverse mortgage changes offer a bit more protection to consumers, the process is still a risky and expensive option.
Updated reverse mortgage guide: Two things you should know [CFPB]
morez срочный автовыкуп by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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“What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law,” Comey said on Thursday.
The U.S. Supreme Court clarified this summer that a search warrant is required for police to search a suspect’s phone. If a suspect refused to turn over the password to their phone, authorities could try to electronically pry those devices open with help from the companies, like Apple and Google, that make the operating systems.
But Apple announced earlier this month that the only way to access personal data on phones using iOS 8 would be with the users’ passcode.
“Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data,” wrote the company. “So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.”
Google then announced that the upcoming version of its Android operating system would have similar protections against using third parties to get around passcode locks.
“There will come a day when it will matter a great deal to the lives of people… that we will be able to gain access” to the info on smartphones, explained Comey, who says he wants to speak with Apple and Google “before that day comes.”
The FBI Director says America may have reached the point where we are “doing things that no longer make sense, that are no longer consistent with our commitment that we are a country of law where no one is beyond the law.”
Of course, we’d argue that these privacy updates are no different than having a personal safe to which only you know the combination.
There are still numerous ways for police to get information related to a suspect’s smartphone.
Google, Apple, app companies, and wireless providers can still be compelled to hand over data on calls, texts, e-mails, and other messages. The additional privacy protections only serve to keep the data stored solely on your phone hidden behind the passcode.
And, as Ars Technica points out, while Apple and Google may be removing a backdoor access to your devices, information stored in the cloud is likely still accessible to these companies, who would have little option but to turn over the data requested by authorities.
Finally, the privacy enhancements do nothing to stop the secretive collection of smartphone data by governmental agencies, as that involves intercepting communication between users over wireless and wired broadband networks.
“The outrage is directed at warrantless mass surveillance, and this is a very different context,” explains George Washington University professor and former Justice Department computer crimes lawyer to the Washington Post. “It’s searching a device with a warrant.”
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist