Consumerist
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don't buy a macpadd
MacPadd Inventor Drinks With Wife, Brags About Education, Curses, But Does Not Provide Tracking Number
Some people should never go the entrepreneur route. Meet David Free, the man behind QMS, a company that sells and sometimes even ships an aluminum mousepad called the MacPadd. When the guys at TomsHardware.com started asking why theirs hadn't arrived, they discovered that Free does business his own way. Or sometimes not at all:
More »Free then exclaimed, "Get out of my f***ing life!" And hung up on us. By now it was becoming clear to us that we weren't going to receive the product we paid for.
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activism
How To Protect Yourself From Takedown Notices
Earlier this week Boing Boing posted a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's new Takedown Hall of Shame, which is exactly what it sounds like: a place to highlight some of the most egregious attempts by companies to use the law to bully critics into silence. Included on the site is a handy guide that explains steps you can take to help prevent the sudden shutdown of your site due to an angry business. More » -
refinancing
How A Disputed Item On Your Credit Report Can Screw Up Your Home Loan
Thanks to federal regulations, when you dispute an account on your credit report and the dispute is resolved in your favor, the credit reporting agency is required to remove or correct the account. Credit reporting agencies often don't do this, though, and the Washington Post notes that it can come back and interfere with your next home loan application. More » -
refunds
Adobe Takes Four Months And Counting To Process Refund
Jeff bought a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 back in May during a sale promising a $200 discount. The final checkout price didn't reflect the discount, but he double-checked the terms and conditions and confirmed that he was eligible. Adobe agreed, and has repeatedly promised to issue a refund. Jeff has been waiting for the check for almost four months, and he's not alone. Another customer has been waiting on a similar refund for almost a year! More » -
good news
National Arbitration Forum Exits Credit Card Dispute Business
Score one for the consumer over unfair arbitration. Just last week, Minnesota's Attorney General sued the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) for fraud, false advertising, and deceptive trade practices—and now the company has agreed to pull out of the credit card business entirely. According to the settlement reached on July 17th, "The only business NAF can now be involved with is in arbitrating Internet domain disputes, a business it has long been in." More » -
bad consumer
Woman Pulls Gun And Threatens Walmart Customers After Being Sold The Wrong Ammunition
We know it's stressful out there, but really, there's no reason to start waving your gun around in the Walmart parking lot. According to the Peninsula Daily News, a woman threatened several other customers who told her to stop yelling at Walmart worker who had sold her the wrong ammunition. More » -
extortion
Royal Caribbean: Give Us $800 Or Find Another Ship
Royal Caribbean told Mary Hoefs at check-in that her family wouldn't be allowed to board unless they paid $800 on the spot, even though Mary had paid for the cruise in full four months earlier. Royal Caribbean later refunded $400, but why did they choose to kick off Mary's cruise with extortion? The answer, inside... More » -
chargebacks
ImLive.com: Disputing An Erroneous $450 Porn Charge Is A "Serious Violation Of Our Terms Of Use"
Someone hacked reader E's account on the adult site ImLive.com and bought up $450 worth of credits. By the time E. caught the charge, half of the credits had already been used. When E. informed the site that he was planning to file a chargeback with his credit card company, he was warned that doing so would be "considered a serious violation of our terms of use." The site's suggested alternative was simple: they would restore the used credits, and E. could watch lots and lots of porn. More » -
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verizon
Verizon Loses The Broken Phone You Returned, Suspends Your Service
Luis dropped his busted LG EnV in the mail at the end of last year and tracked its progress as FedEx delivered the package to Verizon. Verizon, apparently unfamiliar with tracking numbers, doesn't believe that Luis ever returned the phone, and insists that they're owed a $320 replacement fee. Luis disputed the charge, but rather than investigate his claim, Verizon decided it would be easier to suspend his service. Now they want Luis—a customer of seven years who pays over $350 across six phone lines each month—to pay another $15 to reconnect the service they should never have disconnected in the first place. He writes: More » -
chargebacks
Woman Who Missed Obama's Inauguration Starts $10,000 AmEx Chargeback
See, here's why you pay for big ticket items with a credit card. A Chicagoan who gave $10,000 to the Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC) back in January to secure a spot at Barack Obama's swearing in, never got to see the event because of the security and crowd-control clusterfrak. Unfortunately, the PIC has ceased to exist, and has basically taken a "sorry about that, but thanks for your money" attitude, so she initiated a chargeback. The Washington Post reports:
American Express has given her an "interim" refund in full, pending a review that will involve the credit card company presenting to PIC officials all of Blessman's documentation on the services she feels she was denied.
"One Spurned Purple Ticket Holder Claims Victory" [Washington Post] (Thanks to Megan!) (Photo: Patricia Jones Blessman)
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conflict resolution
No, You Should Not Use A Forklift To Move A Car Parked In "Your" Spot
Georgia resident and SECO Parts and Equipment employee David Johnson told his co-worker that there would be consequences for parking in his spot. "He better come move it," Johnson warned, "or I'll move it for him!" This wasn't enough to convince the co-worker to move from what had to be an ideal spot, so Johnson did what any rational solution-minded employee would do. He got a forklift... More » -
credit score
How Credit Bureaus Correct, Or Fail To Correct, Errors On Your Report
SmartMoney's Anne Kadet looked into the process by which the three major credit bureaus—Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax—investigate and correct errors on credit reports. What she found was that the process is "almost entirely automated," and that "many lenders respond by simply rereporting the erroneous data." Here's how it works, and your meager options when something goes wrong. More » -
fees
US Airways Doesn't Know Why They're Charging You $25, Doesn't Care
Reader Alex says that U.S. Airways charged him a $25 fee that they can't explain — and are unwilling to remove. If he doesn't like the mystery fee, he says, he was told to do a chargeback. More » -
Hampton Inn
Hampton Inn Bans Customer For Parking In Their Garage
Hampton Inn general manager Jennifer Stahler banned reader Jack from staying at her Inn again because he dared to park his car in the Inn's garage. Jack wasn't sure he could park there in the first place, even though there weren't any signs warning "private" or "employees only," so after parking, he checked in with Jennifer who told him he was fine and even wrote him a parking slip. The next morning she changed her mind and demanded $38 in valet charges. When Jack reminded her that she never mentioned any fees and had given him a parking slip, she agreed to remove the charges but then explained that he was "no longer welcome to stay." More » -
vonage
Vonage Says "If You Hang Up We'll Cancel Your Account"
We don't know what the hell happened with this customer service situation, but somehow the CSR for Vonage decided that when Sarah abruptly hung up on him, she agreed by default to a service cancellation and $92 cancellation fee. That sounds like the kind of angry-CSR "mistake" that can be fixed with a second call—but according to the next CSR Sarah spoke to, that's just Vonage policy. What? More » -
eecb
EECB / BBB Complaint Solves $500 Dispute With TMobile
Bill says that an EECB (executive email carpet bomb) follow up to a BBB complaint solved his $500 billing dispute with TMobile, and he couldn't be happier. More » -
advanta
Advanta Raises Your 8% Credit Card To 20% Because The Economy Is Bad
Joe writes:
I have had an Advanta Credit Card for a little over a year now. My interest rate prior to a few days ago was 8%. My credit rating is very good, and I have always made my payments on time. As I was looking over my bill for September I noticed a fee of $75 dollars. A few clicks later I found that my interest rate had been raised to 20%.
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circuit city
Is This Computer Water Damaged? Circuit City Says Yes
Robert bought an extended warranty from Circuit City, but they won't honor it to repair his broken computer because they claim it has water damage. Robert writes, "As God is my witness, this computer has never seen water," and he sent us the photos Circuit City sent him. More »
disputes
New York, 2:19 PM
Sat Nov 14
13 posts in the last 24 hours
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