Consumerist
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Shopping
More Consumerist News from Around the Gawkesphere
Here are a few Consumeristy links from around the Gawker ranch. May you enjoy them with much enjoyment. More » -
Drm
Sony Settles Rootkit Class Action (Part the First)
It appears the Sony rootkit fiasco may be approaching an end. Techdirt is reporting that the company has settled one of many class action lawsuits, offering three free albums' worth of MP3 downloads or $7.50 plus a single albums' worth of downloads. As a poster on Techdirt points out:According to Sony, 2 albums' worth of music has an actual value of $7.50. That's $3.75 per album.
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Complaints
Consumers Speak: Best Buy vs Circuit City
Rick B writes:It may be a bit late for tales of Christmas shopping woe, but what the heck—its slow at work today. [No joke. -Ed.]
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Reviews
Customers R Dumb: Clientcopia and Lone Star Statements
As we approach the New Year, let we consumers take a moment of quiet reflection to acknowledge that often we are as dumb as dirt. Before you make that phone call to customer service or write up your blistering review of your latest book, read up on the sort of teeth-crunchingly idiotic things clients and customers have said in the last year. More » -
Deals
Free Service: Amazon Credits You
Remember a couple days back when we recommended using Amazon's 30-day price drop policy to your advantage? We thought that was a pretty good idea, obviously, but keeping track of the price drops for every item—not just in a month, but every day in between—sounds like a real hassle. More » -
Shopping
Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne: Not Gay, Not Coked Out, Not a Jedi
Overstock.com's CEO Patrick Byrne is a man who enjoys his crazy in bulk. Although the company continues to grow year-to-year, Byrne is doing his best to dissuade investors from giving him any of their money to burn. More » -
Deals
Morning Deals Round-Up
• If yesterday's $20 boxed set of Firefly snuck by you (as it did us), take advantage of today's $22 deal from Buy.com. Slow shipping is free. [via Slickdeals] More » -
Riaa
Serial Killers of Suing: How the RIAA Finds Its Victims
There's a fascinating story over on p2pnet describing exactly the legal process the RIAA is using to blanket sue tens of thousands of people. More » -
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Mini
Mini Luges Down Building, Explodes & Craters
Yesterday - in our Cool, Innovative Advertising? post - we wrote about advertisers that "got it", who managed to briefly make the world a cooler, more surreal place for their intended audience/suckers. Of course, sometimes that daily dose of surreality isn't the masterstroke of some hip marketing guru, but the result of butterfingers with a bolt gun. The lads over at Billboardom have a great story about an ad campaign in Toronto in which a luger, frozen counter-gravitationally in time, uses a Mini Cooper to luge down a building. Except the Mini went plummeting off the side of the building, cratered, then erupted into what one can only hope was a fiery explosion 10 stories down. Absolutely awesome. Thankfully, no one was hit by the car on the way down, which is good news from a humanitarian perspective but leaves us twitching at our computer with a line about the impact of advertising on the average consumer that now, alas, can never be used. -
Sony
Sony Stealth Sucks
There's an excellent entry up over at Scatterbox detailing Sony's perfidious scum-suckery (ed - penultimate 's' chipperly added because The Consumerist is, at heart, a family publication). First: the spyware and malware they surreptitiously installed on the computers of thousands of people who had actually bothered to buy their CDs; then, vandalizing other people's property so they could tattoo their rainbow corporate swastika in public places on somebody else's dime. These guys are sleazy enough that a mere push would send them in a frictionless glide right across the pit full of jagged glass bottles and honey consumers would like to roll them in. More » -
Wellpoint
Wellpoint Says Anesthesia Unnecessary in Colonoscopies
We're posting this not simply because it involves the wistful dream of the CEO of a major medical insurance company taking it up the can, but also for the remarkably vivid lead-in: "Mr. Insurance Company CEO ... when you get your colonoscopy, are YOU going to go without the sedative?" More » -
Complaints
Consumers Speak: SBC Yahoo DSL's Rack Rate
Mike L writes:Received a letter from SBC regarding my DSL service - informing me that my 1-year contract is about to expire. And, for my convenience, they will automatically renew my service (currently paying ~$26 per mo.) for "just $34.95 per month, with absolutely NO TERM commitment!*" The letter went on to encourage me to take "absolutely NO ACTION" It boasted that this "low monthly rate" is "$5 less than the rack rate for SBC Yahoo! DSL Starter (a service not listed on their website, not that I know what a "rack rate" is...), and $15 less than the rack rate for SBC Yahoo! DSL Express (I was starting to feel the sensation of being "racked"). This lovely letter is signed, sincerely, by one Jason Crawford of the SBC Yahoo! Marketing team.
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Airlines
What's the Cheapest Way to Fly to Vegas?
Reader Colm H writes:I have an air travel question I was hoping you could help with. I m in Chicago, a Vegas virgin, and I m heading out there for the first time at the end of March for a bachelor party. The hotel is set, so I don t need any package deals, but I ve been hearing conflicting reports on airfare. As of now, the cheapest round-trip airfare (Thursday-Sunday) I can find is around $350, but I have heard from a few fellow Chicagoans that they ve gone out there for as little as $210. I know that it s cheaper to leave and come back on weekdays, but that is impossible with work. What gives? My friends have told me to check it everyday and it should go down. Does the price really fluctuate this much? I hope you can help, or point me in the right direction.
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Shopping
The Dark Winter of Our Soles
We got this frightening portent in our Gmail accounts today from shoe retailer Zappo's. The mukluk menace mushes on. More » -
Retail
Tip o' the Beard and Hat to B&H Camera
The actual, successful purchase of a camera seems sort of a sad end to The Thomas Hawk Affair, but we suppose we can be happy that he got his camera in the end. Our publisher Nick Denton seems especially happy about it, since he keeps sending us links to stories about people buying cameras from B&H. We guess that means he'd like us to post up this one, as well, by Mr. Joe Wilcox of 101 Typepad Lane. More » -
Fast Food
The Consumerist Salutes America Saluting Carl's Jr
Don't worry. Every employee gets to take home their own $6 burger for the family. (Thanks, GKnauss!) -
Music
Ear Bud Headphones Causing Deafness
Apparently, ear bud style headphones are causing people in their early twenties to suffer the sort of hearing impairment that typically afflicts codgery octogenarians with bronze hearing conches sticking out of their ears. More »
New York, 10:59 PM
Wed Nov 11
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