Consumerist
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complaints
Tmobile: Pay $239 For Calls You Didn't Make To Africa
Mike had his phone stolen and $239 in fraudulent calls made to Africa on November 4th, and even though he reported the charges on November 5th, Tmobile says he still has to pay up. Their inviolable policy is that you're responsible for the charges up until you report the phone as stolen. Mike recorded his failed attempts to get Tmobile to credit his account.
At one point, Mike says, "We've been customers of yours for three years, with two phones, and two numbers on one one phone... We've never once called any country on the continent of Africa, and then all of a sudden on 3am in the morning on the 4th we decide to call Mali?" More »
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red
Point/Counterpoint: (RED) Raises $100 Million, Spends 82% On Advertising
(RED), the global co-branding experiment that directs a percentage of (RED) product revenues towards fighting AIDS in Africa, has only directed $18 million out of $100 million spent. AdAge reports that this is raising eyebrows other than our own.The disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business. It threatens to spur a backlash, not just against the Red campaign — which ambitiously set out to change the cause-marketing model by allowing partners to profit from charity — but also for the brands involved.
Charities are usually judged on the percent of contributions spent on programs, rather than administration. (RED) is not a charity. In a letter to AdAge's editor, (RED)'s CEO Bobby Shriver explains why this makes all the difference.Because (RED) is explicitly NOT a charity, we encourage our partners to go about their business including their marketing. This sells the products; the products generate the $25 million. In addition, this marketing would have been spent anyway, on other product lines. It never would have been (nor will it ever be) given to the Global Fund.
We tell you who's right, after the jump. More » -
pr
100 Years of PR Celebrated With World's Largest Cake!
Oh jeez, just spotted this [update: wonderful bit of satire] at Strumpette.
- Public Relation Demonstrates Commitment to Humanitarian Efforts
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africa
No, Really, WaMu Gave Out Counterfeit $100s
Despite the horde of commenters asserting he got slipped fake $100s by an African Safari company, reader BC persists in laying the blame on WaMu. More » -
wamu
WaMu Gives Out Counterfeits, Doesn't Care
BC hit a hiccup on his African safari honeymoon. When he went to pay the adventure company with $100s his wife took out their WaMu bank in ATM, three of the Franklins turned out to be counterfeit. More » -
ernest angley
'Jesus Cures Aids,' Promises Ohio Preacher to African Poor
An American preacher on Crusade [sic] in Africa offers an unusal come-on to Lesotho's poor: he cures AIDS. More » -
consumerism
Consumerist Contamination of Ghana
Over at the New York Times, Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has written an extremely thoughtful look on the cultural and consumerist "contamination" of traditional Ghanaian life. There's so many good quotes in it, we could just go nuts with the blockquote tags, but overall, it is a remarkably fair piece on the recent influx of Western media and products into a largely agrarian, tribal African country; a piece on contamination, unlike most, that doesn't sneer at third-world consumers as unthinking automatons too ignorant and unworldly to see their kente cloths as more "authentic" than imported Levis, but people who make cultural and consumerist choices based upon their own free desires, and who should be encouraged to continue doing so as the drivers of their own cultural destiny. More »
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1-7 of 7 for "Africa"
