Consumerist: Breaking

UPDATED: Breaking: Circuit City Closing 155 Stores

Ben Popken — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:21:10 EST

According to anonymous insider tips, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing from 12 markets. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. A scan we received of a letter distributed to CC employees helps corroborate the story. The tipsters say that store employees were told this morning. No information was provided at that time about severance pay. Employees in certain departments, like car installation, and Firedog, will likely be out of a job within 48 hours. Warranties will still be honored. UPDATE 6: Here's the complete official list of closing stores.

A Consumerist commenter on this post says this story is true, and a few posts in Google Finance forums also attest to the store closing. One post there says the store closings will be effective 12/31/08.

The news wouldn't be entirely unexpected as WSJ reported on Oct 20th that the retailer was considering closing 150 stores. On Friday, Oct 31, CC was warned it get delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its stock price averaged below $1 for 30 days.

You can already start to see which stores are closing by seeing which ones don't show up in Circuit City's online store locator.

Circuit City is officially fried.

UPDATE: A Consumerist commenter on this post and a message in the Google Finance forums have also said that the store closing are going to happen.

UPDATE 2: Another Circuit City insider writes: "A team of liquidators will be coming in and taking control of the store. They will set prices as they see fit, and price match guarantee, employee discounts, CC circulars, and the new one price guarantee are all out the window. The price you see is the price you will pay, although it ought to be at a bit of a discount. Firedog services as well as car audio installation are gone immediately. Returns and warranties have to be taken to a CC that's not closing. No new stock will be delivered, we just gotta crank away and sell off everything, and when it's sold, we hit the road."

UPDATE 3: A CC employee scanned and sent us this letter he received from CC about the store closings:

UPDATE 4: In classy fashion, Chicago CC employees were told the news at what was billed as a "holiday kickoff" meeting that instead became a "holiday layoff" meeting.

UPDATE 5: Another CC insider reports, "Liquidators will be coming in on Tuesday and the affected stores will be shut down. there is likely not going to be a severance package for us being affected by the layoffs but we were given the option to get a bonus based on how many hours we worked under the liquidation process. We are not allowed to transfer to other locations and have to wait out the liquidation process before we can reapply. So essentially, we will have to take a paycut, a position cut, and more than likely an hours cut if we want to still work for the company.

More importantly I tried to find out what was going to happen to all the warranty computers. Customers will be getting a call from their local firedog techs tomorrow (Monday) about either to pick up their computers and take them to a different location to do warranty work, or for those who have already had their computers sent out for repair be told where they can pick it up. As far as I've been told everything that is out at our repair depots has already been set in motion and will not be shipping back to the stores that are closing. During the liquidation process we will no longer be accepting gift cards, coupons, checks, or circuit city credit cards.

I would tell people to call up their store tomorrow and see where their laptop is being shipped to because obviously that could be a very big hassle for people."

(Photo: heartburn)

TSA To Stop Being So Crazy About Liquids

Ben Popken — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:08:12 EDT

Soon you might be able to take your shampoo and booze on the plane once again without trouble. The head of the TSA told WSJ's The Middle Seat Terminal blog, "I think realistically in one year we, the TSA and foreign colleagues, will be a position to relax liquids restrictions...We are within a year of having the ability to differentiate threat liquids through the screening process.” The rule relaxation is thanks to airports deploying new x-ray machines and scanners that should be able to tell the difference between a bottle of water and a bomb. Just don't expect it to happen any time before 2009.

TSA Likely to Relax Restrictions on Liquids in 2009 [The Middle Seat] (Photo: AP)

FDIC Sheds Qualifying Beneficary Coverage Rule

Ben Popken — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:46:05 EDT

The FDIC is going to make two changes to their coverage. One affects beneficiaries and one affects trust accounts, according to a bank insider who participated in teleconference call the FDIC held banks this morning as a refresher course on FDIC coverage. The big news is that the "qualifying beneficiary" rule is gone. Here's the specifics:

BENEFICIARIES
It used to be, only beneficiaries that were direct family members qualified for the $100k FDIC coverage. Now, any beneficiary will receive full FDIC insurance coverage.

TRUSTS
Our insider says, "Before, if a trust allocated assets to beneficiaries in unequal amounts, FDIC coverage was basically gimped. If there were 5 beneficiaries and 1 got 80% of assets and the rest were split between the other 4, FDIC coverage would not equal 500k

Now, regardless of allocation, FDIC will give 100k coverage to each beneficiary up to 5 beneficiaries. At 6 or more, if the allocation is not equal between all beneficiaries, it reverts to the old rules for amounts over 500k. If the allocation is the same, each beneficiary (to infinity) gets 100k coverage per grantor on the trust."

So, good news, there's more lenient FDIC coverage. A small measure designed to help stem the number of depositors, concerned about FDIC coverage, from yanking their accounts, These changes should be reflected on the FDIC website by Monday, said our source.

(Photo: andrewcarroll)

Feds Loan AIG $85 Billion

Ben Popken — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:36:49 EDT

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York will lend AIG $85 billion. Explaining the breathtaking move the Fed said, “a disorderly failure of A.I.G. could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance.” They're not just dumping out the public purse on the counter, though. FBNY will take a 79.9% stake in the company, the collateralized loan is for two years, and is expected to be paid off by selling off assets. NYT writes, "the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions does business with." You can say that again.

Fed to Loan A.I.G. $85 Billion in Rescue [NYT] (Photo: Getty)

Amazon.com seems to be back up. A bit slow, ...

Ben Popken — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:34:28 EDT

Amazon.com seems to be back up. A bit slow, but functional. All in all, the site was down for 3 hours, which is very very long for a gigantic online retailer to be down these days. [Amazon]

Amazon.com Is Was Down!

Ben Popken — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:16:12 EDT

Whoa Amazon is down. It just says, "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable." Then I tried again and the front page was there, but when I clicked through, same error message. It looks like it's been this way since at least 1:30 PM, eastern. It was broken for several Consumerist writers who tested it out.

How much money do you think they're losing every second? Well, Cnet says, "Based on last quarter's revenue of $4.13 billion, a full-scale global outage would cost Amazon more than $31,000 per minute on average." However, that won't be happening as the international Amazon sites are still up. An Oct '07 Bloomberg article says US and Canadian sales account for 55% of revenue, so based on that, they're losing roughly $17,050 per minute. The stock market seems to have taken notice; Marketwatch says, "Shares of Amazon were down 2.7% to $82.25 in early afternoon trading."

A post on an online forum for Amazon sellers says, “Engineers are actively engaged in resolving this issue and we will provide an update once the issue is resolved...We appreciate your patience during this time.”" Does anyone have a spare paperclip? Time to hit the reset button.

UPDATE: 4:04 -It's spluttering back from the dead. Pages load very slowly and clicking around may still lead to dead pages.

UPDATE: 4:31 - It's alive! A bit slow, but now once again you can buy everything in the world without leaving your house! Huzzah!

(Thanks to fivecentnickel!)

General Outage Hits GrandCentral

Carey — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:25:36 EDT

Google's telephone service GrandCentral has been down all morning. The service's first general outage affects all customers; any calls to GrandCentral numbers are immediately disconnected.

From TechCrunch:

We've noted problems with the service in the past, but never a general outage. The site is down. The service is down. Everything appears to be offline.

If you want to be a phone company, and get your users to rely on you to manage all of your incoming calls, this simply cannot happen.

GrandCentral is an amazing service that lets you forward calls, record chats with customer service agents, and save on incoming calls with T-Mobile. We would highly recommend that you grab a number, but the outage is affecting their website.

Google has yet to release a statement or give any indication when GrandCentral will be back up and running—though it better be soon. Google's starting to make Verizon look good, and that's simply intolerable.

If You Wanna Be A Phone Company, You Can't Go Dead [TechCrunch]

Massive North American Blackberry Outage

Meg Marco — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:28:10 EST

Blackberry smartphones are screwed up! There's a massive outage going on in "the Americas" says RIM.

"This is an emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage," RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson said in an e-mail. The message said the outage affected enterprise clients and "users of the Americas network."
RIM was not immediately available for comment and its e-mail gave no estimate on when service may be restored or how many individuals could be affected.

Rut-roh, Shaggy!

UPDATE 1-RIM notifies of "critical" BlackBerry outage [Reuters] (Thanks, Mexifinn!)

Exclusive: CompUSA's Tentative Liquidation Schedule

Ben Popken — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:03:10 EST

A CompUSA repair tech has leaked to The Consumerist what he says is their schedule for the liquidations happening now until they close everything down after the holiday season. This is in no way set in stone, he says, but it looks like this is how it's going to go down starting this week. (He would also like everyone to know that no one his place steals porn from customers).

Already:
New product shipments have ceased, what's already shipping and in the warehouse is it.
TAP Warranties are run by Assurant and so they will probably all be valid.

Monday/Tuesday:
General Managers get told what's going on:

Tuesday:
Last day to check in your computer for repairs.
Tuesday is the last day for returns.
Employee discount ends.

Wednesday:
10% off sales start
Repairs get shipped to Blue Raven
All sales final and if a return is accepted, it will be on a case by case basis

After Wednesday:
10% is only the beginning. Prices will be dropping weekly.

PREVIOUSLY: CompUSA Will Close All Stores After Holidays

(Photo: quentinr)

Ted Stevens Wants To Switch Between Phones "As I Ride My Motorcycle"

Ben Popken — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:18:45 EDT

Carey has a hot new Ted Stevens bon mot, gleaned from his liveblogging of the Senate Commerce Committee Hearing On Number Portability, coming from the same crazy-old-man-stratosphere as his infamous "series of tubes" remark.

Listen to the clip

Transcript inside...

We think Ted is talking about being able to use voip, landline, and wireless, all with the same number, and, presumably, even different providers, which would actually be pretty cool. Almost as cool as riding a fatback hog down the information supertubeway.

PREVIOUSLY: Liveblogging The Senate Commerce Committee Hearing On Number Portability

IDT Energy Scammer Spotted On Upper East Side

Ben Popken — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:27:04 EDT

A reader living on the Upper East Side describes almost being scammed not an hour ago by an IDT Energy salesman pretending they were from ConEd. This was around 62nd street between 1st and 2nd avenues. If you live in the area, keep an eye, and maybe a camera lens, out for as an African-American male in his 20's wearing khakis, dress shoes, and a buttoned up shirt and probably carrying a binder. Jeremy writes:

I work from home and was in the middle of a busy period when a young man came to my door saying that he worked for ConEd or that he was doing some work for ConEd — he definitely identified himself with ConEd. Anyways, he told me he that he was doing work in the building and that he needed to see my bill to check if I had a message on it indicating that I was one of the ones in the building who would be getting a discount next month. Well, chock it up to me being distracted or just plain gullible, but I never even thought for a second that it was a scam. He seemed like he was merely performing a check, not anything more. He then proceed to tell me that I was, in fact, one of the lucky ones, and that I'd be seeing a 7% discount starting next month (all the while making notations on my bill, supposedly indicating where the savings would come from).

He told me he just needed my signature to verify that we had spoken. It wasn't until he asked for a second signature that I got suspicious. Ya see, the second signature was on a form that he covered up completely except for the signature line. When I pulled up the sheet to read what I was signing, he pulled it back real fast and started mumbling an obviously rehearsed sales pitch about what it supposedly was.

Fortunately, I wised up and caught the scam and sent him on his way. The whole experience, however, was BEYOND SHADY! They are not attempting to run anything legitimate (or at least this guy wasn't).

— BEN POPKEN

RELATED: Our undercover investigation into IDT Energy

Liveblogging Digg's $#@*!storm

Ben Popken — Wed, 02 May 2007 02:45:16 EDT

1:30, Diggs started to take longer to register . The digg box on one post started showing 11 diggs, when the post really had 56.
1:40 Our post is the top blog post when searching for digg in technorati tags, resulting in our first noticeable traffic ever from technorati. good thing we got reinstated in the directory for the 3rd time or so recently.
1:43 Serious slowdown after digging posts...more than 30 seconds.
1:44 Digg pwns sel: "Digg will be down for a brief period, while we make some changes."
1:45 Listening to the "Oh Nine, Eff Nine" song.
1:47 Digg still down.
1:48 It is going to take them a really long time to remove all the stories with the code in it. And then there's all those pesky users to ban.
1:49 Still down.
1:51 They are never going to keep that number out. People will add it as comments just for no reason. Congrats, MPAA, you've created a powerful new meme!
1:52 Just noticed that Kevin Rose, Digg founder, posted something two hours ago about how they're effectively going to tell the MPAA to shove the C&D. It uses the AACS code as a headline so you know he is for reals, or maybe it's just Digg-bait to increase his AdSense revenue.
1:59 People say it's up. But they also say it's timing out and hanging. Still down for us.
2:03 Now everyone sees "We'll be back shortly."
2:05 We remember enjoying the headline that said, "BREAKING: DELL DUDE LANDS ON MOOn!" With the subheading "also 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63.jpg." Think it linked to a picture of Kevin Rose, a shovel, one of those terrorist creatures from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and a graphical representation of the deadly number. Not quite the perfect Venn diagram of Digg user interests, but cut 'em some slack, they're working on the fly.
2:08 This is a phat rap about the number.
2:09 Fatigue, thoughts of this post's pointlessness, begin to settle in.
2:12 Posting more screencaps taken shortly before the crash, inside.
2:16 People say it's up!
2:17 Hasn't propogated to us yet. Apparently the top story is Rose's, "I will never take this down."
2:19 It's back for us. Looks like the same crazy pile of hex stories. It's well past the tipping point of where people are just clicking on, and submitting all, the hex code stories they can.
2:20 Wonder if Digg will credit their advertisers for all the page refreshes.
2:21 Again, Rose: ""But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you 've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."" Let's see what kills Digg first, fighting the MPAA suit or no one wanting to read a site full of hex spam.
2:28 Submitted this post to Digg.

— BEN POPKEN

RELATED: A good explanation of what this is all about, over at BoingBoing.
PREVIOUSLY: Digg Goes Ape$#@*!

BEFORE

AFTER

Digg Goes Ape$#@*!

Ben Popken — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:35:34 EDT

A wide-scale user revolt is disrupting popular social news networking Digg. It's a protest over Digg acquiescing to MPAA pressure and deleting a 15,000+ dugg story about a crack for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DRM system.

Now, every single story on the front page contains the cracked number in some way.

The madness began after not only was the initial story deleted, but the user's account was deleted as well. Other people who submitted stories linking to the number also got their accounts deleted and their sites received takedown notices. Even people who submitted stories about the deleting of other accounts, stories which did not contain the number, also got deleted. That's when things really got bonkers.

Users are hiding the number in all sorts ways. One story claimed that a new Jules Verne manuscript was found, entitled, "09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:... Leagues Under the Sea." Others link to pictures of the number. A new one says Jesus has "the secret key." Others coyly ask, "anyone know what this number is?" Diggers are digging the stories like crazy, trying to keep the number on the front page and thumb their nose at Digg and the MPAA.

Screencap of the chaos, inside...

Fostering internal civil disobedience cements Digg's status as a democratic news site. The question is whether it can endure what it created. Will all the stories get removed? Will all the users that submitted them get banned? Will Kevin Rose get his panties sued off if they don't fully comply with the MPAA's directive? Will people ever understand that trying to ban something on the internet only ends up making it propagate like meth bunnies?!?!

It'll probably be all over by morning, with only a top-ranked Digg story to recap the memories. — BEN POPKEN

Wiis At Target This Sunday

Ben Popken — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:53:07 EDT

At least 60 Wiis will be arriving and selling at Target stores this Sunday, according to an inside source.

They will be sold on a first come, first serve, basis with tickets handed out to people standing in line.

The sale should be announced in this Sunday's circular.

Our Midwest region source says she saw a memo on her manager's desk, labeled "strictly confidential," announcing the sale. She tried to snap a cameraphone picture (above) of the memo, but said the manager was stalking her all night so she only able to get this Loch Ness type shot.

Explanation of the memo text above: The insider says the memo is instructing any stores that have Wiis to pull them from the shelves, then put them back on when the new shipment comes on Sunday.

The Original Wii Locator also says EB/Gamestops are rumored to have Wiis in store for this Sunday as well. A commenter on Go Nintendo says they're slated for Circuit City.

Is there a massive Wii sale in the works for Sunday? — BEN POPKEN

BREAKING: JetBlue Cancels All NY Area Flights, Police Respond To Riotous Crowds

Ben Popken — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:27:45 EDT

Police are responding to crowd disruptions in the Newark International Airport following JetBlue's announcement that it was canceling all flights in the New York Metro area.

[13:18] Neil: I subscribe to a fire/rescue/police notification service that basically listens to those scanners and sends text messages to its subscribers..
[13:19] Neil: they said JetBlue just cancelled all flights out of Newark and have called the Port Authority Police to respond to the terminal for crowd control and disturbances going on there now.

JetBlue's website confirms the cancellations. Looks like their new "passenger bill of rights" will be tested.

Anyone got cellphone pix? Send 'em to tips@consumerist.com. — BEN POPKEN

UPDATE: Seems like nothing really happened with this so-called "riot." Buried for inaccuracy.

JetBlue Getting Ass Kicked By Weather Today

Ben Popken — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:38:17 EDT

A Winter Weather advisory seems to be kicking JetBlue's ass, still reeling from last month's flight cancellation debacle.

Many flights are delayed or canceled, and if you call in to check or change your flight, a recording tells you they're experiencing really high call volume, check the website, and then hangs up.

When passengers try to check their flight through Jetblue.com, the page says "server too busy."

We advise customers trying to check their flight to try a free online service like FlightAware.

JetBlue, didn't you pledge to get your act together? The weather may be an "uncontrollable irregularity" but your inability to staff your phone lines isn't. — BEN POPKEN

Northeast Winter Weather Advisory [JetBlue]

Reader Sabin writes:

"I'm flying jetblue today and haven't been able to get flight info through the normal channels. I ended up getting info by using the complaint form.

I provided my confirmation # and someone got back to me within 1/2 an hour with updated flight information."

Michael Baroody Gets CPSC Nomination Nod, White House Confirms

Ben Popken — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:31:40 EST

The White House broke its press blackout and confirmed that Bush intends to nominate Michael Baroody for chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, WSJ online reported today at 5:20 pm.

Baroody's professional career consists mainly of PR work for major Republican candidates. Recently, he served as chief spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, a group the San Francisco Chronicle described as "an industry group that opposes aggressive product-safety regulation and punitive fines."

Product-safety regulation... punitive fines... aren't those CPSC's bread, and butter, respectively?

Baroody's new role promises to be an exciting challenge for all involved. At least it wasn't a recess appointment over President's Day weekend, as was originally rumored. Now the nomination must pass approval by our esteemed elective representatives. They should have tough questions to ask, as long as they're not too busy having a "liberal moment" somewhere. — BEN POPKEN

Bush to Nominate Baroody to Chair CPSC [Washington Wire]

PREVIOUSLY:
Bush Expected To Nominate Industry Lobbyist To Head CPSC
CPSC Enters Semi-Neutered Status

BREAKING: CompUSA Closing 128 Stores

Ben Popken — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:23:30 EST

CompUSA is closing 128 of 229 stores, a source familiar with the proceedings tells The Consumerist.

A liquidator, Gordon Brothers Group, the same used for Good Guys, will take over tomorrow, Wednesday 2/28, he says.

A company insider also tells us that says the closed stores will be ones with a high monthly rent and will include locations on the East Coast, West Coast, and in the Chicago and Atlanta areas.

Stores being closed were informed via conference call with headquarters around 3pm eastern time today. — BEN POPKEN

PREVIOUSLY:
CompUSA Invented 53 Week Year So Execs Could Cash Big Bonuses?
On Second Thought, Don't Expect Good Prices During CompUSA Fire Sales
EXCLUSIVE: CompUSA Closing 100 Stores
(Photo: jetalone)

EXCLUSIVE: CompUSA Closing 100 Stores

Ben Popken — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:07:50 EST

CompUSA will close 100 stores this year, according to an industry insider speaking to us under conditions of anonymity.

Currently, CompUSA has 229 stores.

News of the shuttering comes after recent corporate restructuring, and a swirl of rumors in recent weeks about the ailing retailer. One was that CompUSA might get a $400 million-plus infusion from Mr. Carlos Slim, Mexican billionaire chain owner. Another one posited that the retailer might buy, or be bought by, Tiger Direct.

Hammered by competition from Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and internet retailers, and burdened by over $100 million in unsalesable store inventory, Mr. Slim evidently thinks CompUSA's chances at recovery too narrow.

This bodes well for shoppers. Can we say fire sale? — BEN POPKEN

(Photo: P )

BREAKING: Cingular Shuts Off TDMA Service

Ben Popken — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 06:57:01 EST

Starting today, Cingular is shutting off TDMA cellphone service in Toledo.

TDMA is an older system of carrying cellphone signals. Most countries, except the US, use GSM. TDMA phones will not work the new GSM network Cingular is pushing.

If you live in Toledo and your service goes off today, you can call customer service and they will turn it back on temporarily.

After November 13th, however, Cingular will shut off TDMA phone service for Toledo completely.

Undoubtedly, Toledo's shutoff will prove a testing ground for other cities.

How current customers can protect themselves, or use this to Cancel Cingular, inside...

From our tipster:

"Customers in this situation, can get a new GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phone, or port their phone number to another carrier if they so wish, but regardless they absolutely will not be able to have TDMA service in the city of Toledo after the 13th.

Those getting a new GSM phone will be offered good deals on low end phones if they wish to extend their contract and slight deals on high end phones for a contract extension. Customers migrating to GSM phones will be forced to use a current Cingular plan. The chances of these plans being anywhere near as good as the old TDMA plans is pretty much nill.

The inference I made was that they would let you cancel under these circumstances without an early termination fee, however, I have to get that confirmed. Based on my knowledge of the terms and conditions, I am very confident this is the case. Cannot think of any of the many sleazy terms that would let them charge you for this one. However, it is a very sleazy contract, so do get the status of the early termination fee confirmed.

Please remember, the only way to take your phone number with you is to start service with another carrier before canceling with Cingular.

I highly recommend that folks in this situation call Cingular customer care, ask for the phone to be turned back on and ask what they would be charged if they canceled service right away. Advise you will not be canceling today, but you want it notated on your account what you were told about the cost of canceling today. Have the rep read the note back to you. Then, if you so wish knowing everything, call another carrier, start service and ask them to port your number to their service. Whichever company you choose will take care of porting your number from Cingular and canceling your old service for you."

Breaking: Sears Black Friday Ad

Ben Popken — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:59:40 EST

Nary seconds ago, Sears Black Friday ad pooped onto the internet.

Check out the full listing at GottaDeal to learn how much you can save on Cubic Zirconia Bracelets (only $11.99) or Kids Sweater (60% off). GD's got everything, along with some links and pics. The links to Sears online site don't seem to be live, but if you Coralize them, you can check em out. (Install the ErrorZilla extension to Firefox, or add this bookmarklet to your browser)

Frankly, we're a little disappointed in these Black Friday sneak peaks so far. We expected cheesy inserts we could mock. Look at you, you're naked and out of context!

Sears Black Friday [GottaDeal]

Breaking! IDT Energy Scammers Working On Brookylyn RIGHT NOW

Ben Popken — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:36:55 EDT

A reader reports IDT Energy is knocking on doors right now (7:45 PM, Monday, Oct 9th) in Brooklyn, around 3rd and Bergen.

They pretend to work for Con Edison but are actually hardball sales people for IDT, trying to get you locked into one of their variable rate energy plans.

Look out for a man and an African-American woman sporting a ConEd binder and an IDT photo ID.

"They said I had to sign something and was being overcharged by ConEdison," says our tipster, "and claimed to work for the company that supplies ConEdison. Good thing I read Consumerist."

Our reader is going around putting up warning notes on his neighbor's doors. He says, "I feel bad for my Hispanic neighbors."

Related: Why IDT Energy Is A Scam

Get A Sweet Xbox360 Bundle This Weekend

Ben Popken — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:07:13 EDT

UPDATE: The deal could be ready as early as Thursday or Friday, according to a reader who spoke with a different Fry's Outpost rep.

Fry's Outpost is out of the Xbox360 bundles we posted about in the Morning Deals, but fear not!

If you missed the package, which contained a XBOX 360 Premium Console, Saint's Row, Dead Rising, Test Drive Unlimited for only $359.96 (a $200 savings)....

Starting this Saturday at 5am ~~Eastern~~ Pacfic Time, Fry's Outpost will have the same bundle, or even better, available for purchase. The Fry's rep we talked to said it's part of their big anniversary sale.

Set the alarm for crack o dawn and keep your eyes peeled on Fry's Outpost or call 1-877-OUTPOST.

BP Closes Major Alaskan Oil Field

Ben Popken — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:03:00 EDT

Due to a leak, British Petroleum announced an indefinite shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay field, which produces 8% of the US oil supply. Crude oil prices rocketed past $76.

"We will not resume operation of the field until we and government regulators are satisfied that they can be operated safely and pose no threat to the environment," said BP President Bob Malone in a statement.

WSJ reported the leak was around 200 gallons, which is less than five barrels.

While that might seem overcautious, BP is just exercising its short term memory. It wasn't but this March 2, 2006, when a BP worker discovered a large oil spill in western Prudhoe Bay. Over 267,000 gallons splooged out, the largest ever on Alaska's north slope.

Both the March 2 and this August's oil splooge were due to a corroded pipeline.

Breaking: Farecast Public Beta Announced

Ben Popken — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:32:15 EDT

Airline fare prediction site Farecast will be available in public beta early the week of June 26th.

Using sophisticated searches and brokering deals directly with the airlines, Farecast aims to deliver lower prices and more information to the consumer. Most uniquely, this includes a forecast as to whether prices on a particular route are rising or falling, along with the site's confidence in that result.

For now, you can still try it out at Farecast.com. User: tips@consumerist.com. Pass: consume

Previously: Farecast Predicts Airfare

comment on this post

BREAKING: IRS Archive Control Sold to Lowest Bidder

popkin — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:01:05 EDT

An anonymous tipster writes that the IRS lost a bid yesterday and its archives will now be controlled by a company in Florida.

The tipster writes that the government is undergoing "restructuring" whereby:

"Yesterday], we lost that bid, to a company in florida. Which means that our government will no longer be controlling your tax documents that are archival in nature (and we also store documents for this tax year) it will be in the hands of the lowest bidder."

This is also happening to other governmental agencies, not just the IRS. Corporations aren't controlling the "inner workings" of each agency, but everything ELSE is being sliced up and delivered.

His latest entry is here and he promises to post developments.

Much to his surprise, when the regional director...

Told the news, the tipster's fellow employee's questions revolved around whether they could hired with the new company, and not, as he developed a headache thinking over, the long-term ramifications of outsourcing the entire government.

We're intrigued, but not necessarily alarmed, this could be a good thing, after all. As long as the core operations are kept intact, the "restructuring" could lead to greater overall efficiencies, which can only mean one thing: tax breaks for the rich, which will undoubtedly trickle down to the neediest of all: the lower upper middle class.