Consumerist
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Complaints
The Limits of Unlimited 3G Wireless Broadband
The internet is all around you, flying invisible through the air, clawing silently at your eyes. Oh, and your wallet. New '3G' cellular data services from Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular are top notch, technology-wise—seriously, we love the ability to have highish speed internet wherever we can get a cell phone signal—but the pricing is a bit out of hand. Wireless nerd Glenn Fleishman takes all three to task specifically for their used of the term 'unlimited.' More » -
Great Moments In Shopping
Great Moments in Shopping: Disney's Cancer (or Birth Defect) Lamp
Due to the Dual-Pox Prohibition of 1907, gift-boxing is not available. Because their gift boxes give you AIDS. More » -
Shophacks
Claim Your Crap in Three Clicks or Less
Out there in the great expanse of the mind, you might have misplaced a few tokens of ownership, like the keys to your car or your children's bones. That is as natural as the sun's hateful rays, and we do not condemn you. But did you know that someone may have misplaced property or money for you? More » -
Shophacks
Shophackery: Never Forget to Mail a Rebate Again
Mail-in rebates are a chump's game, and on the whole, we recommend against them. (That's one of the reason you'll so few MIR offers in our Deals Rounds Ups; The other is that half the time they just don't work.) More » -
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday: Not Our Funday
Business Week's Bob D. Hof has a brilliant dissection of the 'Cyber Monday' campaign, the much-touted farce designed by Shop.org to spur you to purchase lots of holiday crap.Shop.org member Shmuel Gniwisch, chief executive of the online jewelry site Ice.com, recalls getting an e-mail from Shop.org last year, suggesting that online retailers come up with their own marketing hook to match Black Friday. "The online guys got together and said, 'Let's give people something different,'" he says. "The reality is, we didn't notice anything special" on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
We've personally gotten dozens of calls about 'Cyber Monday' over the last week, mostly from confused print and television editors questioning why they hadn't heard of this massive online retail fiesta. The reason is pretty clear, as Hof explains: for most major online retailers, 'Cyber Monday' isn't the biggest shopping day of the year. More » -
Deals
Morning Deals Round Up
• Unconfirmed. Slickdeals is reporting that all three Harry Potter and all three Lord of the Rings DVDs are on sale at Target for just $5.88 a pop. In Store only, bring a wand. More » -
Suck
The Suck Site Review: BestBuySux.org
A classic example of post-Flash minimalism, BestBuySux.org offers customer complaints alongside horror stories from employees. Presented in Plainest Text™, BestBuySux.org even has the good grace to offer a "Pro-BB" section, where customers and employees can offer a balance to the six years of collected vitriol which is indexed month-by-month. More » -
Evil
H&M's Stella McCartney Collection: Cheap Clothes You Can't Have
H&M is the latest of the bargain clothing retailers to play the 'limited edition' game. A recent collection by Stella McCartney sold out at H&M hours after its debut—with no plans for restocking. It's not the first time H&M has played the game: A collection last year by Karl Lagerfeld was also snapped up in hours. More » -
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Deals
Morning Deals Round Up
• Sometimes the simple deals are the sweetest: Use the code "EM21HL30" for 30% off for purchases at FootLocker.com, including gift cards. [via Slickdeals] More » -
Complaints
Citibank Makes Nerd Unhappy
David at 37 Signals proves that even nerdy nouveau Web 2.0 folks aren't exempt from good ol' Banking 1.0. He's opened an account at Citibank—or tried to. Can basic, everyday banking be so hard to get right?• told that our new account process would start in a few minutes , then being forced to wait for 30
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Starbucks
Starbucks' Unionized Square
Baristas at the Starbucks in Union Square have made a bold move for headline writers everywhere, joining two other Manhattan stores in the 'Starbucks Union.' A division of the Industrial Workers of the World—The Fightin' IU 600—the employees surrounded their store manager (a full-time employee) and demanded that they be allowed to serve high-quality coffee that didn't taste like powered roofing shingle. Or maybe a guaranteed 30-hour work week and health care benefits. One of those. More » -
Best Buy
Best Buy's Xbox 360 Bundle Bumble
When new game consoles launch, retailers often choose to sell 'bundles' instead of just the console itself. That's because the markup on the consoles themselves are next to nothing (usually just a couple of dollars when everything is all new and shiny), and also because it allows them to force some of the less popular accessory items on customers who just want the basics. More » -
Amazon
Amazon Dabbles with 'ProductWiki'
Amazon has become one of the de facto locations for customers to write up their experiences with products—even if they didn't buy them from Amazon. Now Amazon is toying with even more customer interaction in the form of 'ProductWiki,' a collaboratively-edited description page for each product. More » -
Deals
Morning Deals Round Up
• Grab Turbo Tax Basic, Quicken Deluxe '06, and a paper shredder at Staple's online store for $0 after 'easy rebates.' (Easy rebates can be processed online.) Get the codes at SlickDeals. More » -
Ragerank
The Tag of Suck: Ragerank
David Galbraith, founder of Wists, crony of known Hungarians, and guy who can never complete a phone call, hates T-Mobile. That's not the story. Out of any random sample of American cell phone users, at least half would hate T-Mobile. Mostly out of an irrational fear that subscribing to a service hawked by Catherine Zeta Jones could somehow cause pictures of Michael Douglas's bare ass to be beamed through space into their phone, but still. More » -
Customer Service
IVR Cheat Sheet: Get a Human On the Line
As we prepare to enter the most wonderful time of the year—the time after the holidays are over—The Consumerist is working to help prepare you for the inevitable calls to customer service departments. Whether it's to return a product, get some directions, or just to find a sympathetic voice to leave on hold for ten minutes at a time *, you're going to have to navigate the Interactive Voice Response systems that serve as gatekeepers to real, bored human employees. More » -
eBay
eBay Takes the Blame for Everything
This guerrilla campaign by eBay in Brussels shows how marketing obviates the need for facts and figures when a hastily-slapped sign can say so much more. These stores went out of business, for god-knows-what reasons—perhaps a death in the family, or a shortage of mayonnaise—but that didn't stop eBay from taking the credit. More » -
Worst
Worst Electronics Buys of 2005
If you think about it, it's much more efficient to tell you what sucks, rather than point out exactly what to buy this Christmas. That gives you much more freedom to gift with your own personal, somewhat antagonistic flair. ("Yes, I've always yearned to play the electric bagpipe, Mother!") More »
New York, 3:18 AM
Thu Nov 12
19 posts in the last 24 hours
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