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16 Tips On How To Be A Better Hotel Guest
While most of the travel horror stories we cover on Consumerist involve airlines, the hotels, bed and breakfasts, inns and flophouses of the world are no stranger to regular readers. But one reader writes in to explain that the best way to get good service from hotel staff is to just be a decent human being. More Â»

What Wall Street Did To Earn The Ire Of Those Occupying It
If you need a catchup-slash-refresher on why those folks down at Occupy Wall Street are so mad at the street they're occupying, ProPublica has put together a nice juicy primer. More Â»

China's Hypergrowth Fueled By Building Giant Cities No One Lives In
Chin up, America. China ain't so great. That 10% GDP growth they've been having? A lot of it is fake. Take this investigate report that looks at the big trend over there of Chinese ghost cities and ghost malls. China is building ten of these cities a year, cities that can serve millions, with rows of apartment complexes, shopping malls, and universities. But almost no one lives in them. By pouring materials and resources and labor in, the government can keep national GDP at its state-mandated levels, even if its not meeting any real demand. It's like someone is playing SimCity with all cheat codes, but this is a game China is going to lose. More Â»

White Castle Offers Test To See If She Really Loves You
If your love is true — I'm talking love as deep as what you'll find in Before Sunset or the hearts of Buffalo Bills fans — it can survive absolutely anything, including the complete forgetting of Valentine's Day or its utter degradation, which would encompass dinner reservations at White Castle. More Â»

Handy Guide To Major Airlines' Voucher Policies
Airlines might give you a travel voucher when if you're bumped from a flight or there was a fare reduction, but not all vouchers are created equal. The fine print can vary from airline to airline, with different expiration dates and fees. Airfarewatchdog has a got a cheat-sheet table for you breaking down all the vouchers so you can save your eyes from bleeding. More Â»

Gift Card Error In Your Favor: When Do You Tell The Hotel?
A reader emailed us to ask what he should do about an accounting mistake he discovered with some gift cards. He suspects the different parts of the hotel don't update the card balance in real time, but it could also be that the hotel's employees aren't processing the card correctly. Now he's wondering whether he should have said something. More Â»

Report Says The Poor Subsidize Credit Card Reward Programs
A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says that credit card reward programs have a sneaky hidden cost that the card holder doesn't have to bear. This occurs because the fee that a retailer pays to run a credit card varies with every card, and reward cards cost more to process—in other words, the card issuer passes the cost of the rewards program on to the retailer. The retailer adapts by raising prices across the board, which distributes the cost of the reward program among all shoppers. More Â»

What's In The Financial Reform Bill?
Now that the Senate has passed the financial reform bill, it's off to non-smoke-filled rooms, where it will go into a Blendtec with the version passed by the House last year. CNNMoney.com sifted through all 1,600 pages of the bill and came up with a handy cheat sheet explaining what's actually likely to change when this thing becomes a law. More Â»

"Dirty Dozen" Cheat Sheet Reminds You Which Foods To Always Buy Organic
To help you remember the "Dirty Dozen" foods to always buy organic, Heidi Kenney has designed this fun free cheat sheet to keep in your moneypurse (organic farming doesn't use synthetic pesticides). Flip it over and you've got the "Clean 15," which had the lowest pesticide count.. One time I was eating lots of fruits and vegetables and I ate a not-organic pear and my lip swelled up like a monkey's for a few days... maybe I should start using this list! More Â»

Tell FCC What You Think About Proposed Comcast/NBC Mergepocalypse By May 3
Do you have strong feelings for or against Comcast's proposed acquisition of 51% of NBC/Universal? The FCC has asked for comments from "interested parties," so if you have anything compelling to say on the matter, here's where to go. More Â»

Visit NYC, Eat Breast-Milk Cheese
If you want to try human breast-milk cheese, make sure you stop in at Klee Brasserie in New York City the next time you visit. It's made from the chef's own wife, and he tells the New York Post, "It tastes like cow's-mik cheese, kind of sweet," and changes flavor depending on "what the mother eats." His wife says, "The breast is there to make food." Maybe, but I'm thinking this is a good way to shave a little off the cheese budget. More Â»

Colorado Springs Billboard Company Says "No Puppet Boobs Allowed"
Lucy the Slut is one of the puppets in the musical "Avenue Q," and like the other puppet characters she's frequently displayed in their advertising. But not in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where a billboard company refused to put up ads showing Lucy's cleavage. An exec for the billboard company told the local paper, "If I have to explain it to my 4-year-old or my grandmother, we don't put it up." Hey four-year-old, it's a puppet. Hey grandma, those are boobs. Problem solved. More Â»

Want To Participate In Haiti Relief Efforts? Here Are Some Options
Haiti's president says the death toll from yesterday's earthquake may rise above 100,000. You probably already know some organization you see eye to eye with that's trying to help out, but if you want to donate but don't know who to donate to, try these options. More Â»

Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money
Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to "pre-optimization" of computers, it's difficult — sometimes impossible — to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer's advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three "optimized" computers to ones with default factory settings, there was no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually performed 32% worse than the factory model. The results of our in-depth investigation, inside... More Â»

Don't Worry, This Kool Aid Doesn't Expire Until 01 Feb 11 02 11:48 CH

—>Chad, who sent this in, says he tried to decipher this Kool Aid's expiration date using the cheat sheet we posted last December, but nothing on this container matches the code format on the sheet. It can't be that hard to print an unambiguous human readable expiration date on a product. Who else needs to read the date, other than a human? Why should the average consumer have to worry about deciphering a date? We thought we'd all pretty much agreed on some basic rules for how to keep track of the days.  More Â»

Even More Expiration Code Cheat Sheets

—> Another Consumerist Hero, as tipster P gives us another "Expiration Code" Cheat Sheet. And what food stuff does this cover? Why, delicious delicious candy! Find them after the jump.  More Â»

Cheat Sheet for Sketchy Food Expiration 'Codes'

—>Brian, you are the man. After seeing yesterday's post regarding the confusing expiration codes found on some foods, Brian sent The Consumerist a handy cheat sheet explaining the various code format, found inside. A+.  More Â»

MisterJalopy over at BoingBoing has put together a rough outline of a cheat sheet when shopping for eggs, based on an article in yesterday's New York Times on how to interpret egg carton labeling. [BoingBoing]  More Â»

Quickly Get A Live Rep With Dial-A-Human

—>Dial-A-Human.com is just like Gethuman.com, offering a cheat sheet of secret codes to bypass annoying phone-trees and get right to a live operator.   More Â»

Sweatshop In Queens Produced Clothes For Macy's, the Gap, Banana Republic, Urban Apparel, and Victoria's Secret

—>New York state labor officials are bringing one of their largest cases ever against Jin Shun, a clothing factory in Queens, New York that employed Chinese immigrants. Inspectors say the company

• cheated its workers out of more than $5 million in pay;
• instructed workers to lie to state inspectors;
• required 6 and 7-day workweeks, sometimes for up to 120 days at a time;
• didn't pay overtime or minimum wage;
• kept two sets of timecards to fake-out inspectors.

Macy's says they're "very concerned" about the case and are investigating it, the Gap says they're cooperating with authorities, and Victoria's Secret says they have a "zero tolerance policy" for factories that are unwilling to work with them to achieve compliance—all of which makes us wonder whether any of these companies ever investigated the factory personally. (It's not like it was in some remote part of China.)  More Â»