From NBC 10:

Fire victims from the Riverwalk at Millennium condominium complex told NBC10 and the property management of the apartment complex that Comcast is going to charge residents to replace any cable boxes destroyed in the fire.

NBC 10 contacted Comcast and the company said it's true.

Fire victims will have to cover the cost, but residents should get reimbursed by their insurance companies, whether they are renters or homeowners.

How much will fire victims have to pay?

"We don't share specific information about our costs, but they can vary depending on the type of box — HD boxes, Digital Video Recorder, etc. We're doing all we can to accommodate our customers who were affected by the fire," a Comcast spokes person said.

“They have agreed to extend the due date for charges related to the damaged boxes until Nov. 15, which does allow the insurance companies for these residents time to process the claim and provide residents with funds for which to pay that due," said Lauren McDonald from Riverwalk Property

Comcast says they're not going to bill the fire victims for the cable they're not watching and will waive future installation fees.

Comcast Charging Residents For Equipment Lost In Condo Fire [NBC 10] (Thanks, Steve !)
Conshohocken Apartment Fire Ruled Accidental
[MyFoxPhilly]
(Photo: WTXF )

Ryan says:

Apparently their trucks run on "high speed" only. And guess what? No free cable.

Here's Brandon's story:

I took my car to The Car Stereo Company in Los Altos, CA back in November of 2007 to get a stereo, speaker set, and GPS system installed. I met with a salesman who was very nice at the time, and convinced me that their shop would be able to do a good job installing these components. They informed me that they did this same type of installation before on another BMW and that they knew what they were doing. I scheduled an appointment early the following week to bring my car in for installation.

After I got my car back from The Car Stereo Company, I noticed that my climate control system inside my car wasn’t acting the same way it did before the installation. There was hot air coming out of the air ducts when I selected cold air. So, I took the car back to the store and asked them to take a look at it. At first, they were very agreeable to at least try to fix the problem, but they weren’t able to do so. I took my car back to them subsequent times to allow them the opportunity to fix the problem, but they just didn’t have the skill and wouldn’t admit it. At this point, the salesman was getting annoyed with my frequent visits. They had spent a few hours trying to repair my car unsuccessfully, and thought that they were now doing me favors by accommodating my requests to fix what they broke. In fact, a couple times when I brought the car to them to mend a problem that they caused, I got the car back with another item broken. For example, one time they tried to fix the hot air problem in the car and when I got the car back, the LCD on the climate control module was broken. When I brought this to the installer’s attention, he had the audacity to accuse me of damaging it myself. By this time, I realized that there was something seriously wrong with the work that this stereo shop performed, so I met with some professionals at Stevens Creek BMW in Santa Clara, CA. They work with an experienced, BMW-specialized aftermarket stereo installer and upon first meeting with him, he was able to determine the source of the problem with my climate control and also pointed out several other parts in my car that they unnecessarily damaged. The main problem was that the heater core housing had a huge hole cut in it. The heater core housing holds the heater core, which generates the heat for the climate control system. It regulates how much heat gets sent into the car. With such a large hole cut in it, the climate control system couldn’t operate normally. That explained why the air vents were incorrectly supplying hot air.

As a result of these findings, I decided that I did not want to have anything to do with The Car Stereo Company anymore. They were also becoming very difficult to deal with, and wouldn’t own up to the damages that they caused. I went to their store and asked for a refund so that I could take that money to go get the car put back to stock condition. They decided that they would give me a refund, charge a 20% restocking fee, but would not refund the labor fees. In addition, they added writing on the back of the refund check that would release them of liability of the damages if I endorsed it. So, I decided not to cash the check. After getting legal advice, I decided to go through my credit card company instead to get a refund for the merchandise.

So with this small amount of money in my hand, I thought I could go get my car fixed at Stevens Creek BMW in Santa Clara, CA. Yes, it was a little naive considering nothing is cheap to fix on cars, but the damages didn’t look that bad to me. Apparently the job is very labor intensive. The heater core housing is located pretty much in the center of the car, and it takes several hours to remove the necessary parts to get to it. There were also other things that BMW pointed out that were damaged. They came up with the attached initial estimate of $3,600 in labor and $8,053.91 in parts. I was dumbfounded and heartbroken that my poor car was in such a sad state. I couldn’t pay for over $11,000 in repairs on my own, nor did I feel like I should have to since the stereo shop caused all the damage! I’m sure you might be a little skeptical about how necessary this repair work was, and you’re wondering why it’s so expensive, but I got another estimate from an independent German car mechanic confirming the same findings. Not only that, the exact same thing happened to a Honda Civic owner when he took his car to a Circuit City and it cost just about the same amount to fix the car, as detailed in this article also posted on Consumerist.

So, after talking with a lawyer, he suggested to me that the best way to get the money for the repairs would be to sue the company in small claims court. I followed all of the rules and suggested steps for this process. I began with a demand letter. This was a good way to keep the matter out of court and let them know that I felt that they owed me the money without making things too complicated. After receiving the letter, The Car Stereo Company immediately turned the issue over to their insurance company. I struggled back and forth with their insurance company, and they ultimately refused to cover the claim. They claimed that I was aware that modifications would have to be made to my car to accommodate the stereo, and the procedures used for installation were typical. However, I was not made aware that anything would be damaged in my car, nor that the functionality of the car would be impeded as a result of this installation. Also, as BMW later informed me, the procedures they used to install this stereo are not advisable. And as I already mentioned, another independent German car mechanic confirmed BMW’s findings. I also got a letter from BMW, the German car mechanic, and the BMW-specialized aftermarket stereo installer agreeing that my demand was justified (see attached documents). At this point, I felt my only real option was to take The Car Stereo Company to court. They took no action after their insurance company denied the claim. I wrote up the court papers and had them served and waited for my court date.

The court result, as I’m sure you can guess since you’re now reading this article, didn’t come out in my favor. The judge said he was about to award me money for damages, but later changed his mind. I lost because (as the judge put it) I entered into an oral contract with The Car Stereo Company, and most oral contracts are binding in California. The contract that the judge said we agreed to was that I would pay for the damages on my own if The Car Stereo Company issued me a refund. I had no idea at the time I asked for a refund that I was entering into any sort of contract.

I explained to the judge that I also didn’t know what the cost of the repairs would be at the time of this conversation and that if I knew how expensive they were, I would never have even considered footing the bill for the damages. However, as many people know the law doesn’t always follow common logic, so that didn’t matter. What also didn’t help my case was that two of their witnesses (an installer and a salesman) said that I said to them, “I release you of liability of the damages to my car.” This crushed my case, and I told the judge that I absolutely did not ever say that to them. Honestly, who speaks in those terms anyway? The judge said he believed them and said their argument was more credible since there were two of them supporting their side of the story and I was the only one supporting my side. I explained that the witnesses were biased because they worked for the owner of the stereo shop. The judge’s response was, “They don’t look biased to me.” I couldn’t believe it. So, needless to say I was again dumbfounded by yet another ridiculous event in this whole debacle. That’s where the story leaves off. I couldn’t believe they got away with it.

Brandon also included the final repair bill and a letter from a car stereo installation expert describing the damages to his car.

"This is a quarter of steady progress," CEO Philip J. Schoonover said in a conference call with investors. "We still have a long way to go, but I'm encouraged by what we've been able to accomplish."

Accomplish? Does anyone want to tell Phil that he's supposed to be selling electronics? No. That would be cruel.

Meanwhile, there's been no word on Blockbuster's plan to buy the troubled retailer. Presumably, they're still thinking it over.

Circuit City loss increases; next quarter may be worse [Star-Tribune]
Circuit City Posts a Wider Loss as Sales Fall [NYT]
(Photo: cmorran123 )

Hello all,

This is my first time posting to this list and I'm hoping that someone will be able to help! My husband and I contracted with a moving company, Broadway Express, to drive our belongings from Boston to Oakland, CA. Yesterday, after the truck was packed by local professional movers, the Broadway Express driver drove down Mt. Vernon Street, turned onto Storrow Drive and promptly hit the Longfellow Bridge (11' clearance and a 13' 6" truck), shearing off the entire top and sides of the truck and distributing our belongings across the road. We have the standard moving insurance offered by this company, which is $0.60/lb. In retrospect, we should probably have tried to get better coverage, but who would have thought that the truck driver would try to scrape the top 2.5 feet off of his vehicle?

My question for the list is: does anyone have experience in dealing with a total moving disaster? How can we maximize our reimbursement? Most of the furniture was damaged and a good deal was totally destroyed. The moving company claims that we need to pay for the move in order to file a claim, so they have already charged my credit card. This was our first experience using professional movers and I can't say I enjoyed it.

Thank you in advance for any advice and let me know if you'd like to see pictures — I have a ton.

Best,
Unfortunate People

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Any advice for these people?

Don't hire Broadway Express as your moving company [Universal Hub]

More info on the bridge crash [LiveJournal]
(Photos: K a t m )

The Wall Street Journal says that Mazda had lots of potential buyers. Movie studios wanted to use them as stunt cars. High schools wanted them for auto shop classes. In the end, Mazda decided to destroy them. All of them.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mazda turned everyone away. It worried about getting sued someday if, say, an air-bag failed to fire properly due to overexposure to salty sea air.

It also worried that scammers might find a way to spirit the cars abroad to sell as new. That happened to thousands of so-called "Katrina cars" salvaged from New Orleans' flooding three years ago. Those cars — their electronics gone haywire and sand in the engines — were given a paint job and unloaded in Latin America on unsuspecting buyers, damaging auto makers' reputations.

Mazda saw no easy way to guard against these outcomes. So it decided to destroy approximately $100 million worth of factory-new automobiles. "We couldn't run the risk of damaging the brand name that Mazda worked so hard over the years to develop," says Jeremy Barnes, the company's corporate-affairs director for North America.

It turns out that wrecking cars isn't a simple matter. "We had to create a disassembly line, basically," says Bob Turbett, the Mazda executive overseeing the destruction process.

Crazy!

A Crushing Issue: How To Destroy Brand New Cars [WSJ] (Thanks, Erie!)

Last Monday night, the Cortes family boarded the Majesty of the Seas for what was supposed to be a lavish, 5-night cruise. On Tuesday, the Cortes' 7-month-old Zoie, started getting ill and the ship's doctor was dispatched. With symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, little Zoie was diagnosed with dehydration and the doctor said she needed immediate treatment, but off the ship. According to the family, a security guard gave them 10 minutes to pack their bags and leave the ship. "I asked if my wife could get out of her pajamas and there was no time for that. We had to leave," said Luis Cortes. The Cortes' speculate that the doctor suspected Norwalk virus since Zoie exhibited symptoms similar to the virus'.

At 11pm the Cortes' rapidly disembarked into Nassau and sought treatment at a local emergency room. However, Zoie was diagnosed with a cold, not the Norwalk virus. Additionally, the family said she had seasickness. The Nassau doctor deemed Zoie fit for travel, however the cruise ship had already left. "We had to find our way to the U.S. Embassy. All of this on foot. A family of five in this town we knew nothing about," said Cortes. The expenses that ensued were to the tune of $3000 for the cost of the emergency room, emergency passports (passports are not required on Caribbean cruises but RC recommends them), and plane tickets back to Florida. Royal Caribbean responded to WFTV saying that they were concerned because the child was so young and didn't want to take chances. Royal Caribbean is giving the family free vouchers for another trip, but will not reimburse the cost of the passports and tickets "because the family didn't purchase trip insurance."

We're not impressed, Royal Caribbean. It's difficult to understand why you would have to kick a family off the boat within 10 minutes because of a case of "dehydration." And now you won't even pay for the family's trip back to Florida? We would think that the reimbursement would be a small amount compared to the money you could be losing from any passenger with a slight cough who may now be afraid to board your ships. We understand that Norwalk virus is the bane of cruise ships but your knee-jerk reaction put this family through a boat-load of unnecessary grief. What would have happened if the ship was at sea? Plank time?

Update: According to Fox News, Royal Caribbean has recanted on not reimbursing the Cortes family. Royal Caribbean says, "Despite the company's strong disagreement with the manner in which the Cortes family's situation has been recounted in the media, as a gesture of good will, Royal Caribbean is providing the Cortes family with a refund of its cruise fare and reimbursement for its flights home."

Family Says Cruise Ship Kicked Them Off Boat Because Child Was Sick [WFTV] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
Royal Caribbean International Statement [Fox News]
(Photo: Getty Images)

The full repair bill is posted on 8thCivic's forums.

VTECnical's Circuit City Road Shop installation [8thCivic.com]

"Again we've had no shortage of big branding mistakes last year and even early this year," said Kelly O'Keefe, an independent branding consultant and CEO of O'Keefe Brands.

O'Keefe has published an annual branding "Hall of Shame" for five consecutive years.

• Wal-Mart:
"Today's Wal-Mart looks more like a Kmart. It's lost those values that made it great. Wal-Mart needs to reconnect with itself rather than trying to compete with Target (Charts) or somebody else."

The article fixates on Walmart firing their ad agency and their sad, sad attempts to be Target, but doesn't mention the Nazi T-shirts, the random racist guy, the hentai porn, hiring Edelman PR, not paying their employees, the spying on reporters, or "Walmarting Across America." Odd.

• JetBlue: Whoooooops. According to O'Keefe, CEO David "Mortified" Neeleman didn't apologize soon enough. "He took over 24 hours to make an apology," O'Keefe said. "He should've acted much faster to say he regretted what happened and that JetBlue would make amends."

We feel compelled to mention that he did apologize, and we still don't get very many complaints about JetBlue. Are you people not complaining? Feel free to send them in. We're all ears.

•Turner Broadcasting System: TBS's attempt to trick Boston into blowing itself up was not well received in this particular article. Consumerist thinks that Boston's bomb squad suffered the bigger reputation hit. Yes, it was stupid to put lite-brite boards on bridges. Should the bomb squad be able to tell the difference between toys and bombs? Yes? Dare we say it?

We nominate Dr. Pepper looting Paul Revere's grave as the dumber Boston-area gorilla marketing faux pas.

• Home Depot: Apparently, women don't like Hope Depot. "Lowe's is far more successful in that regard," said O'Keefe. Maybe it's that women don't like standing in line for 190 million years while they wait for staff members to evolve out of a vat of primordial ooze so that they can open a register. Maybe that facet of the brand is not "connecting."—MEGHANN MARCO

Corporate Branding Oops [CNNMoney]
(Photo: Clean Wal-Mart)

A group of Spanish Fort Elementary students were on a field trip in Montgomery the day the tornadoes hit.

The 4th graders and their teachers, reportedly, went to the Embassy Suites Hotel to escape. Instead of being rescued, an employee, allegedly, told them the hotel was full and turned them away. "It's still unacceptable to be turned away in a moment that harm is potentially present," says Baldwin County School Spokesperson Terry Wilhite.

A representative for Embassy Suites says he was not there when the incident occurred. He, also, admits the group should not have been left out in the cold. "Right now, I'm in the midst of researching which manager or employee denied access to out hotel and, believe me, they will be disciplined accordingly," says Embassy Suites Interim General Manager Tom Peterson.

Spanish Fort kids turned away from Montgomery hotel as tornadoes threaten [NBC15] (Thanks, nameunknown...)

10) McDonald's: "I'd Hit It"

In January 2005, McDonald's launched an ill-conceived banner campaign featuring a young man slavering over a double cheeseburger. "Double cheeseburger? I'd hit it. I'm a dollar menu guy," went the animated ad. Amidst controversy, McDonald's pulled the banners and said their marketing department misunderstood the term. For our part, The Consumerist only copulates with food that's certified organic fair-trade.

9) New Coke

8) Honda's Asimo Falls Down Stairs

7) Calvin Klein's Amateur Porno Jean Commercial

Calvin Klein has drawn frequent ire for its provocative advertising and use of teenage models. The series of commercials above, however, pushed the envelope right of the cliff. They feature what appear to be "barely (if even) legal" amateur models in a wood-paneled room being interviewed by a creepy older man. For all intents and purposes, they look like prequels to amateur pedophile pornos. Conceptually brilliant but deeply unnerving, the work perhaps deserves a place in the Whitney rather than Kansas TV screens. In August 1995 the commercials were yanked from the airways and Calvin Klein himself issued a public apology.

6) Microsoft Blue Screen Of Death At Press Conference

5) Beatles Yesterday and Today Butcher Cover

On June 14th, 1966, The Fab Four shocked their American record-label with the the infamous "Butcher Cover" of their album Yesterday and Today. After slipping through the cracks during pre-production, 750,000 copies were distributed across America. At first Capitol Records ordered the albums recalled and destroyed, but then it sent out replacement covers to be glued onto the remaining copies.Though Lennon and McCartney were in on the joke, George Harrison later expressed his disapproval, "I thought it was gross, and I also thought it was stupid. Sometimes we all did stupid things thinking it was cool and hip when it was naive and dumb; and that was one of them."

Yesterday and Today went on to become one of the only Beatle's albums to actually lose money, thought this probably had less to do with its cover art than that it was a compilation album with no new material.

Bonus: The lame cover it was replaced with.

4) The Tylenol Cyanide Scare of 1982

Some product disasters illustrate how a swift company response can mitigate the damaging effects of bad publicity. When Chicago residents suddenly started to die from unknown causes, inspectors drew a link to the Tylenol Extra Strength capsules the citizens took. After ruling out sabotage from the manufacturing facilities, investigators determined someone tampered with the bottles and placed them back on store shelves.

Although many predicted the doom of the Tylenol brand, the pain reliever bounced back within a number of years. Thanks to a swift PR response which included media outreach, discontinued advertising, and putting the safety of the consumer before profit, headache-sufferers eventually forgave Tylenol.

Bonus: Thanks in part to the Tylenol scare, urban legends of cyanide poisoners linger in the public consciousness, casting a looming specter over Halloween

3) Ford Edsel

2) AC vs DC: Thomas Edison Electrocutes Topsy The Elephant

Edison launched a a bitter publicity campaign, designed to frighten the public into using Direct Current. Under his command, Edison filmed and publicized a number of Alternating Current executions of animals including that of Topsy the Elephant (shown). The executions were designed to show how unsafe Alternating Current could be, as it "Westinghoused" his victims. Despite Edison's fervent desire to bring Direct Current into every home in America, he ultimately lost the War of Currents due to the impracticality of wide scale deployment.

Bonus: Harold Brown, an Edison employee, developed the first electric chair to further underscore AC's danger. After the first botched use of the chair in 1890, Westinghouse commented, "They would have done better using an axe."

1) The LZ 129 Hindenburg

If the Nazis had their druthers, the Hindenburg would have carried a swastika as prominently as we might have seen a Goodyear logo, but zeppelin designer Hugo Eckener was uneasy with the use of his airships for propaganda. He was much more comfortable with envisioning a future of mass passenger transport across the Atlantic carried upon the decks of his flying ships.

Due to a US embargo on helium, Eckener was forced to use flammable hydrogen in order to keep his beloved dirigible aloft for its transatlantic journey to Lakehurst, NJ. Amid an audience of thousands of spectators and radio personality Herbert Morrison's eyewitness report, the Hindenburg suddenly burst into a fiery ball of flames. The images would find themselves ingrained on the collective consciousness of popular art and Morrison's words, "Oh, the humanity!", would outlive the disaster for years to come. Many note that other political factors played a role in the long-term demise of the zeppelin, but nothing captured the moment more perfectly than the image of the Hindenburg's flaming metal skeleton as silhouetted people scattered in terror.

Hot on the tailfins of the disaster was an-up-and coming airline named Pan America. Their stable of flying "Clippers" filled the Hidenburg's void.

— THOMAS MOORE and BEN POPKEN

"At Bay City Plywood, there's an abundance of hurricane supplies. Sales clerk Eric Knight says, last year customers cleaned them out, "We were expecting a big hurricane season and it didn't go through so we overstocked is what we did."

Big savings on plywood, shingles and fencing is to be had all over Florida. "It's a great time for shoppers to save. So if you're interested in preparing for next year it's a good time to save money and get shacked up."

Consumer Affairs has a report from Carnegie Mellon University indicating that Gameboy interference on commercial airliners may be far greater than we ever could have possibly imagined. A cellular telephone, idly powered on during a trans-Atlantic flight, may be the subtle nudge it takes for your Airjet to suddenly cartwheel out of the sky and into the big drink, to be devoured by subaqueous Dagon.

Naturally, no hard numbers are offered on the probability of any this. Although "alarming increases in probability" are terribly concerning, they are pretty much meaningless without actually citing some numbers. If the chance of any one cell phone causing an airplane to spontaneously explode was previously believed to be 1 in a Trillion and is now merely 1 in a Billion, you can probably all continue to call 1-900 numbers on your cross-country flights with impunity.

Link: Study Warns Cell Phones Could Cause Airliner Crash