Do you have pets who won’t eat an entire bag of kibble in one sitting? If so, your household might be a good candidate for an automatic pet feeder. What you might not realize is that you can make your own auto-feeder out of ordinary products that you probably have sitting around the house. [More]
Make Your Own Automatic Pet Feeder With A Litter Bucket And A Pie Tin
By April 16, 2013
FTD Thinks ‘A Different Vase Is OK’ And ‘Change The Flowers Entirely’ Mean The Same Thing
By February 25, 2013
At high-volume times like Valentine’s Day, and at any other time, really, flower-delivery services like FTD reserve the right to substitute something similar if they don’t have the exact item in stock that you want. Mark was upset shortly after Valentine’s Day because he ordered an arrangement that had a purple container, purple flowers, and some white lilies in it. Purple is her favorite color, you see, and lilies are her favorite flower. Isn’t Mark thoughtful? Speaking for the ladies of America, he is. He’s also really mad. [More]
Former Spirit Airlines Mechanic: I Was Fired After Complaining To FAA About Service Issues
By February 19, 2013
A New Jersey man who had worked at Spirit Airlines for more than a decade claims he was fired last year after he and a group of his fellow aircraft mechanics filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration about allegedly sketchy service practices at the carrier. [More]
Valentine’s Day Garden Of Discontent: The 2013 Entries From Proflowers
By February 14, 2013
When Proflowers isn’t accusing people of bigamy, Proflowers is apparently busy really, really disappointing girlfriends. So far today we’ve received two reports of the company dispatching really subpar roses. What the recipients actually got is nice and all, but not what the sender paid for. [More]
FTD Kicks Off The Valentine’s Day Disappointment Season With Subpar Roses On February 11th
By February 12, 2013
Alex tried to beat the rush. He had a dozen roses delivered to his lady’s workplace on Monday, February 11th, paying $96 for the privilege. Whatever he expected, it was not what appears in the photo that he sent: even properly lit, there’s a lot more green and a lot less luscious red rose in that picture than there should be. [More]
Not-So-Local Florist Disappoints My Mom With Subpar Roses
By January 11, 2013
The Consumerist Garden of Discontent is a recurring theme on this site, because it seems that delivered flowers will never quite measure up to the photos in catalogs or on the website. In hindsight, Teresa wishes that she had just picked up a few bouquets at Trader Joe’s and presented them to her mom in person before she left town. She could have done some quality control, and the end result would have been a lot prettier. [More]
Dramatic Readings Drastically Improve All Yelp Reviews
By January 4, 2013
Used carefully, Yelp can be a great resource to learn about the best local dining establishments and other businesses and keep up-to-date on new places that open. One thing has been lacking on the site for a long time, though: a sense of drama. Fortunately, the YouTube channel Real Actors Read Yelp is here to fix that gross oversight on Yelp’s part, hiring talented stage actors to get across the true agony of an improperly prepared sandwich. [More]
Transocean Pleads Guilty, Agrees To Pay $1.4 Billion To Settle Charges Related To Gulf Oil Spill
By January 3, 2013
Transocean, the offshore drilling company that operated, on BP’s behalf, the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon rig whose collapse resulted in multiple deaths and untold amounts of oil being released into the Gulf of Mexico, has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Clean Water Act and to pay a total of $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines and penalties. [More]
Celeste Hawaiian Pizzas Add Some Pineapple, Still Have Sparse Toppings
By December 27, 2012
Anh shares my inexplicable love of that cheap freezer case staple, the Celeste pizza-for-one. The just-spicy-enough sauce! The crunchy crust that the likely-carcinogenic microwaving disc provides! The $1 price point! It’s not wood-fired oven pizza, but it’s one of the most edible things that comes out of a box and gets cooked in the microwave. The current line of “limited edition” pizzas tempted Anh, and he opened up a Hawaiian pizza only to find that the toppings were sparse. And it made him sad. Mama Celeste had finally steered him wrong. [More]
Facebook Really Wants To Be Hated, Will Launch Auto-Play Video Ads In 2013
By December 18, 2012
You know how much fun it is when you’re browsing the Internet and you get to a page where a loud video starts playing while you frantically try to stop it or mute your computer? Several hundred million Facebook members should prepare themselves for this thrill when the site launches auto-play video ads next year. [More]
Sallie Mae The Subject Of Nearly Half Of Student Loan-Related Complaints
By October 24, 2012
The recently released annual report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Student Loan Ombudsman looks at the variety and nature of complaints filed with the CFPB’s student loan complaint portal since it launched earlier this year. Not surprisingly to many people with these loans, Sallie Mae’s name comes up in almost half the complaints. [More]
Sprint Says It’s My Job To Drive Around To Every Local Store And Find Someone To Fix My Phone
By October 22, 2012
Douglas has been a reliable longtime Sprint customer. He liked their service, even through terrible 3G speeds for the last few years. Yet it was how he was treated when his Galaxy Nexus wouldn’t work properly that is about to drive him away from the company. He’s had it. He finds it unacceptable that the company thinks he should have to drive around to different Sprint stores in his area to find one that might deign to look at and diagnose his phone. [More]
A Screen Capture Is Not Legally Binding Proof Of An Online Description Change
By October 17, 2012
Should a screen capture be legally binding in any way? We like to think that taking a screencap of a great price or another problem is a foolproof way to hold on to evidence, but there’s a small flaw in that plan. It’s called “image manipulation.” Or, to use a trademarked term, Photoshop. This is probably the reason why Amazon refuses to take the screencap that Anthony took of a sunglasses description as rock-solid proof that they had an error in their listings. He says that he grabbed the image for a different reason, but was glad to have it when Amazon claimed that the sunglasses he bought as polarized were actually non-polarized. [More]
TigerDirect Won’t Accept My Coupon Because It Just Won’t
By October 10, 2012
Jeff got a coupon with his last order from TigerDirect, and decided to use it to order some new speakers. Only the coupon didn’t work. The only explanation he could get from TigerDirect as to why the coupon wouldn’t work? Because it just won’t. They won’t accept it, despite having mailed it to him and everything. [More]
As If We Need Another Reason To Hate BPAs, Study Links Them To Higher Childhood Obesity Rates
By September 18, 2012
Chemical bisphenol-A, otherwise known as widely-reviled and controversial BPA, now has another bit of mud to wipe off its face. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has linked it to higher levels of obesity in kids who have more of it coursing through their bodies. While the research doesn’t conclusively say that BPA actually causes obesity, it does add to a growing heap of evidence that the stuff isn’t good for us. [More]
BP's Bad Gas Made It Into 200 Stations In Chicago Area, Affecting At Least 7,000 Customers
By August 23, 2012
Since the news hit this week that tainted gas from a BP fuel storage facility in northwest Indiana could be causing drivers to have problems with their vehicles, it seems BP had to scramble a bit to get a gauge on how bad the situation is. The company has churned out a few press releases in the last few days, and has now alerted customers and the media that about 200 retail gas outlets in Indiana and the Chicago area had a case of bad gas. [More]
Customers Can't Seem To Get BP On The Phone After Unleaded Gas Recall In Indiana
By August 21, 2012
UPDATE: We asked BP to expound on the statement it shot off to Consumerist that didn’t address the long wait times and busy signals customers were reporting, and a rep told us: ” We apologize for the long hold times. We are adding operators today. Another option is to file a claim by e-mail. “ [More]
Why Should Consumers Settle For Crappy Concert Sound?
By August 6, 2012
Back during our comments outage, reader Chris wrote to us about an incredibly disappointing concert that he attended. The show wasn’t terrible because the artists weren’t any good: even if you don’t like country music, you have to grant that Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw are hard-working, talented, and very attractive entertainers. No, Chris’s problem was that up in his seats on the upper level of the arena, the Angel Stadium of Anaheim, the sound quality was terrible, song lyrics impossible to decipher, and even spoken words in between songs impossible to understand. [More]
