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According to this article, the Grocery Shrink Ray could be hitting all of Pepsi products. (Thanks to Mike!)

Ed writes, "I shopped at the Walmart I regularly go to for, among other things, Gillette Mach 3 replacement blades. They have been available in 4, 8, and 12 packs for seemingly ever. The unit pricing for each was typically very close. 4 packs were about $8.25, 8 packs were $16.45, give or take.

Today, I discovered that the 4 pack is now a 5 pack. The insidious part is that the unit price per blade in the 4 pack went from about $2.06 in the 4 pack to $2.25 in the 5 pack, while the 8 pack unit price did not go up as much - $2.10 from $2.06. While I get that it is very common for bigger volume packs to have a lower unit price, this was not the case for this product. This had held true for at least 5 years.

The other interesting aspect of this is that P&G did the opposite of the "shrink ray." They grew/expanded the content and they sharply increased the price for that package. "

Brian writes,"I've been making my world (read: within my household) famous nachos for years now, and always with the same ingredients. The final part of cooking up the topping is a 15 oz. can of Hunts Tomato Sauce, a 4 oz. can of diced jalapenos (either Ortega or La Victoria), and an 8ish oz. can of diced ortega chiles. All of the items came in their normal sizes at their normal prices, but they are all far more watery than they have been in the past. I noticed it as I poured them into the pan, and now that they've been simmering for a good 20 minutes, it's far, far thinner than usual. I think there may be some companies watering down their ingredients rather than making the serving size smaller. Is this the grocery version of water-diluted gas?"

Got a hot grocery-shrink-ray tip? Send your pictures and stories to tips@consumerist.com.

How should people invest?
One guest said that you should diversify your portfolio and invest globally. While this is true, here's something that will actually help you: Get into index funds - Vanguard is a good to get them from - because you will get to keep more money over time instead of losing it to fees. Here's how most stock pickers and fund managers are ripping you off.

Also, with the global economy being so intertwined, investing globally doesn't reduce your risk as much as it might have in the past.

One guest recommended putting the same amount of money in the stock market because it is a "tried and tested" method of investing. What he's talking about is "dollar cost averaging." The idea is supposed to be that some months the stock is up, and some it's down, but if you invest the same every month, over time the difference averages out. While investing regularly is great and definitely better than not investing, and trying to time the market can be disastrous, you actually make more money if you buy your stock in one lump sum. Here's the study.

Are credit card companies going to keep on lending briskly?
Warren asked a guest if credit card companies are going to keep lending money at the same ferocious rate they have been. The guest said yes, because their mailbox was still full of credit card offers. This is flat out wrong. Credit card companies are tightening standards and reducing their exposure. They're raising interest rates, canceling and freezing people's home equity lines of credit, and canceling credit cards for long-standing perfect customers.

Secondly, if your mailbox is full of credit card offers, you need to go to optoutprescreen.com and with a few keystrokes you can be unsubscribed from probably about 98% of the lists of companies sending you offers.

Who is to blame for the mortgage meltdown?
"There's enough blame to go around for everyone," responded one guest. While this might have made sense, say, back in December, by now it's pretty apparent that there was much more fraud and deception going on with the mortgage brokers and resellers than from the consumer side. Don't believe me? Listen to this episode of This American Life while watching this slideshow. If you're in a rush, just read this insider document of a Chase employee telling other employees how to game the computer system to get loans approved that shouldn't have been approved.

For whatever reason, Chrysler is currently advertising a "Full Tank of Fuel" as a "free feature". That's right. ONE SINGLE TANK OF GAS. I can't imagine buying a car and being told "Thanks for spending $20,000!" then getting into the car... and find out it's riding on empty.

Hey, at least they won't let you uncheck it. (We tried.)

Our tipster writes:

If you aren’t aware, Asus makes an estimated 1 in 3 computer main boards sold globally and in addition to their own brand of products also provide system boards to a number of major OEM builders such as HP/Compaq and Dell. In January, AsusTek split into three separate entities – Asus, which deals primarily with Asus-branded PCs and laptops including the wildly popular EEE PC, ‘Pegatron’, which handles the motherboard business (though we keep the Asus brand name on them), and ‘Unihan’, which handles many of the other non-PC related Asus product line. As a result, each entity was suddenly responsible for its own profitability. No biggie, right? Well, as most of your readers know, customer service and support play a key role in the buyer experience. Given that so many products are similar in specification and performance these days, often it’s the after-the-sale support that can mean the difference in long term repeat business and losing a customer.

Not long after the company split, management began obsessing over numbers, and how to make what is normally an accepted expense (customer support) profitable. It was determined that the new company, ‘Pegatron’, would charge the parent company (Asus) for each technical support phone call, email, or live chat session that was received and responded to. While I cannot attest to the actual dollar amount charged for each call, I do know that phone calls generate the most income, followed by live chats, then emails. Ok, you say, no big deal, how does that affect me? Well, that’s what I’m about to show you, with 10 steps anyone can take in an attempt to get the best possible support by circumnavigating the games played with customers to generate revenue.

1. If you need technical support for any Asus product CALL.
Do NOT send an email, and use the live support feature at your own risk. A single phone call generates more revenue for the company than a couple of Live Support sessions, and more revenue than half a dozen email responses. As a result, nearly ZERO emphasis is placed on answering them, and emails are often replied to with canned ‘cut and paste’ responses which may not be relevant to your case.

2. Best Times For Calling With Low Hold Time
When calling, there are times that give you the best chances to get through with a minimal hold time. Since the support center is based in the Eastern Time Zone, and the best time to call is before 12 noon EST. The very best days to call are Tuesday through Thursday. From Noon-6pm hold times can be somewhat lengthy, as by that time working hours are in play nationwide. At any given time there are only 8-10 staff to take phone calls (yes, we’re grossly understaffed), email queries and answer Live chats. The U.S. office supports all of North America including Canada as well as Western Europe. That translates into a very heavy call volume for a small amount of people.

3. We're stressed, don't take it personally
If the representative you speak to seems curt, ill tempered, or rude, it’s not on purpose, nor personally directed toward you. All support representatives are instructed to strive for taking 70 calls per day. When you factor in a lunch hour and 2 fifteen minute breaks it leaves 450 minutes in a day. For us to reach our goal, we must be off the phone with you in 6.42 minutes. We aren’t supposed to care that it’s the tenth time you’ve called us (which isn’t toll free), or that you can’t stay on long enough to accurately even describe your issue.

4. Can I take a message?
We have recently adopted ‘messaging’ in order to achieve an objective from management that all incoming calls be answered in 60 seconds or less. To that end, we have hired a few people from temp services to answer calls, and when we experience a heavy load, they take your name and number with the promise of a return call. While calls are returned, it may take hours, if not days to get a return call. This serves three hidden purposes. If we message your call, we get paid for taking it even though no support was rendered. When we call you back, we get paid again for making a call. And currently, management has contests running offering cash rewards for most calls handled by a person during the month. Guess what? If we take a message, call you back once or twice, or you yourself call back out of frustration, we may get paid 2 or 3 times before you can speak with someone, all in the name of bonus money.

5. Don't get through? Call back in 10 minutes
If you do get ‘messaged’, you’re better off calling back in 10 or 15 minutes if you have the time. While messages should be returned within 2 hours, it’s often not the case, and generally messaging is done only long enough to clear the incoming call queue, so it’s unlikely you’d be messaged twice in that amount of time. (unless someone is intentionally messaging you, then calling back to generate more revenue and a chance at a nice cash bonus)

6. Write down your case number. Really.
When you FINALLY reach someone, you will likely be assigned a case number. This is a good thing, as it will document the nature of the call and enable someone qualified (hopefully, more on that later) to answer your questions. If you already have a case number, please state it when you first begin your conversation, it will give the technician more time to troubleshoot your problem.

7. It's just like in a game, except not fun
There are 3 ‘levels’ of tech support. Level 1 technicians primarily answer the phones and generate case numbers. There isn’t much point in trying to go into detail about your problem, as most will have a better grasp of basket weaving than solving PC issues. They will most likely transfer you to our level 2 support, where the fun begins. Many of our representatives are competent enough to handle your questions, but if you EVER question the accuracy of the advice you are getting, you can request to be connected to the top tier of support (Level 3) at ANY time.

8. We have the long-term memory of a snail
The reason you may wish to ask for Level 2 or 3 support immediately is this: Pegatron/Asus offers zero informational training about Asus products – past, present, or future. Typically we are not aware that a new motherboard/router/PDA has hit the street until we start getting calls about it. There is no ‘informational meeting’, no product info cheat sheets, or anything of the sort offered to the support team. Normally, the more senior members are tech-oriented, and stay up to date from home, so your chances improve greatly of getting the help you need by asking for a higher tier. Sadly, even some Level 2 agents are lacking basic skills and cannot help you with BIOS settings, RAID setup, installation of an operating system and so forth, nor will they know offhand the specs of the latest and greatest boards.

9. There is no such thing as a ‘known issue’.
Every company that has every produced a physical product has occasionally put out a junk product. We are under direct orders not to confirm ANY problem as a ‘known issue’, EVER. It doesn’t matter if every single model ‘X’ PDA plays ‘Jingle Bells’ every time you turn it on, it’s not a ‘known’ issue and we will not admit to one. If you happen into one of these products that turns out to have ‘known issues’, calling tech support won’t get you anywhere. We will offer to exchange it for an identical product only, which is just as likely to have the same ‘nonexistent’ issue. Since Asus does not sell direct to the public, you won’t be getting a refund either. Sad, but true, so you may wish to browse a few forums and seek outside input before considering any purchase.

10. Merchant refunds and returns are your special friend
If you do have a problem with a new Asus product and are within the return or exchange window offered by your reseller (often 14 to 30 days), don’t waste your time calling us. Simply return the defective product for an exchange or refund. Generally speaking, returning a product to Asus (motherboards in particular), can mean a 2-3 week wait before you see your board returned to you. In addition, it’s likely a refurbished motherboard which likely underwent no extensive testing before being dropped into a Fed Ex box and sent back to you. There is a separate department on the repair floor to handle 2nd and 3rd time returns, and once you’ve reached that level, you r chances of getting a tested board improve marginally. However, these boards won’t be cleaned, and may have thermal paste, grease, smudges, fingerprints, etc on them. It’s no fun to invest $300 in a new top of the line board, only to have an issue with it and get one back that looks like Timmy kicked it down the street for half a mile before putting it in your box. Not fun.

11. BONUS!!!!!
If you do weave your way through the Asus maze and find a helpful soul on the other end of the phone, don’t bank on he or she being there if you need them in the future. We have experienced close to 100% turnover in the past year, and those who remain are constantly threatened, both verbally and via email (proof available upon request, Ben) that they will lose their jobs for failure to make objectives. Sad, yes, but painfully true.

Do you have any tips for dealing with Asus, or Asus tech support stories to share? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

An experiment by Martin Seligman and Steve Maier showed that if you shock puppies over and over and they can't stop it in any way, they will show signs of clinical depression afterward. What do you think happens if you take these same dogs and put them in a cage only one half of the floor is electrified? If you place them in the electrified part, they will just lay down and whimper, getting shocked over and over again. They have given up. They have stopped trying. Selignman and Maier termed this "learned helplessness." But it's not just for dogs.

After getting shocked from every angle for so long, with credit cards' shrinking due dates, flagrant violations of our privacy, rebate scams as acceptable business models, and "it's company policy" as the magic wand to excuse it any time a company screws us, that we just lie down and accept it.

SYMPTOMS:

Symptoms of this dangerous affliction include:

• Sweating (when you see a fee on your bill you don't understand and you figure you'll never get it taken off)
• Nausea (at the thought of having to call customer service)
• Volume Control Problems when you call customer service (either speaking as quietly and meekly as a mouse, or finding yourself saying things like IM NOT YELLING WHY ARE YOU SAYING THAT I AM YELLING)
• Sore arms (from carrying all the added-on accessories and upgrades the salesman talked you into buying)
• Vomiting (after swallowing too many hyped advertising claims)
• Stuttering (if anyone asks you what your credit score is)
• Malaise: (when you think about reporting corporate malfeasance)
• Lightheadedness (because when you go to pay your bills you're looking for them all over the floor and under the couch)
• Cramps (of your bank account because you never pay your credit card off in full and just keep amassing finance charges)
• Dizziness (when you try to think about budgeting past two months from now...or two days from now)
• Blurry Vision (when you try to read a contract's terms, so you just stop)

CLH is a disease, but it is curable. Anything that can be learned can be unlearned.

Stage 1: Immediately read our Success Stories section. It's filled with stories of readers who have fought back and won.

Stage 2: Read our post on rocking executive customer service. With this information, you'll be able to treat customer service dysfunctions that don't respond to normal customer service channels.

Stage 3: Read The Ultimate Consumerist Guide to fighting back. The tips, tactics and techniques it reveals should cure you of CLH for life.

If treatment falters at any step of the way, email your story to tips@consumerist.com. Our trained team of professionals are on call every day.

The door to the cage is open, you just need to walk through it.

Incredible shrinking service. Every single person I know uses Netflix uses profiles. For those out there who don't, you can create profiles for different people using the same account, and allow those people to maintain their own list of movies. For example, I get two discs at a time from my queue, my wife gets one at a time from hers, but we pay for just one 3-disc at a time account.

I called Netflix to tell them that if they do this, I will cancel service with them - I made it clear to the poor guy that answered the phone I wasn't going to yell at him, I just wanted to lodge my protest. It seems he's taken LOTS of such calls. He told me to log into my account, click on the Contact Us link, and go to Suggestions and put the information in there. Apparently that page sends information to the correct people. I certainly hope every Consumerist reader who is a Netflix user does just that. Netflix has been one of the better companies I've dealt with, and I believe that if their userbase tells them "no, you are being dumb, stop it", they just might. This also might be the point where they have realized they have Blockbuster just about beat and are starting to abuse their customers. I hope not, because I'd rather they not let Blockbuster up off the mat.

Here's the email Neflix sent out, announcing the discontinuation of profiles:

Important News Regarding Netflix Profiles

Dear ,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

- The Netflix Team

The ability to have "his and hers", or a kids queue, is pretty essential to the Netflix service for some people. However, according to Netflix's FAQ, they will be emailing people a copy of their queues so they can rebuild their selections. Will this drive you back to the arms of Blockbuster?

Using simple and attractive slider bars, you input your current credit card balance and credit risk. BillShrink then you shows what cards on the market will save you the most money. You can narrow the results by saying which bank you want a card with, what kinds of rewards programs you might be interested in, what goods or services you would most use the card for, and what extra card benefits you're interested in receiving. There's even an option to say about how many times a year you might miss a payment.

Ok, that sounds pretty obvious for a site like this, but here's the real game-changer: the terms and conditions for each card are broken out one by one. In one section, BillShrink translates the entire credit card contract from lawyers-speak into two paragraphs, in plain English.

Most cards have introductory offers, like 0% balance transfers or a higher level of rewards. So a series of bar graphs by each card shows you how much money you save changes over the next three years.If you decide that you want to switch your credit card to one of the ones show, you just click a button next to the card. The site will make money by sending credit card companies these referrals, and remain free for consumers to use.

After you create your credit card profile, BillShrink sends you an email if any of the terms and conditions of your card change (they will). If your card becomes no longer the best value for you, BillShrink suggests what card out on the market is better. The site will also tell you when you're coming towards the end of any of your introductory offer periods, so you know if you'll want to change your usage patterns or switch to another card.

I asked Pham whether when they launched the wireless comparison component, if there was any negative pushback from the providers. I could envision the carriers getting upset about not being able to capitalize on customer confusion as much.

The two wireless companies BillShrink spoke with, Pham said, were excited about the service. Sprint was one of the companies. See, the service essentially filters, educates, and primes the customer for service. For the cellphone or credit card company, it reduces the costs of servicing customers who sign up because a bauble or freebie was dangled in front of them, but don't arrive informed about the particulars of the plan. Those customers end up frustrated and increase churn. But deliver a highly informed and ready customer, and you've got a win-win-win situation.

When we first wrote about BillShrink, readers said they found the service's coverage maps to be inaccurate. Those coverage maps are drawn from the maps on the carrier's websites, extracted down to the pixel, and then overlaid onto GoogleMaps. The inaccuracies are because the cellphone companies purposely don't provide accurate and granular coverage data. The company is looking into buying 3rd party data to beef up their maps, but I wondered whether there was chance of a similar slippage between BillShrink and reality with credit cards. This doesn't seem very likely, as carriers can fudge a coverage map, but credit card companies can't fudge credit card offer's terms without opening themselves up to serious legal repercussions.

BillShrink's credit card comparison service is scheduled to launch at the end of July will 100 cards in its database. Their goal is to get that up to 200, and then 400 within a year's time.

Pham sees it as a "thumb in the eye" to the credit card industry. “The information is out there, consumers are going to get to it eventually," he said.

Next industry on the hitlist? Auto insurance, with cable perhaps not too far behind.

(Photo: Getty)

In the year that's passed since our original post, there's been quite a bit of controversy over nutrition information — city and state governments have tried (with varying degrees of success) to pass regulations that would require fast food and chain restaurants alike to post nutritional information where customers would see it while ordering. When New York City passed a law forcing restaurants who already provided nutritional information to post calorie info on menus, some restaurants pulled their nutritional information from their websites rather than be forced to disclose it on the menu. Now that the dust has finally settled (NYC's original law was overturned and they passed a new one that required chains with more than 15 locations to post calorie information on menu boards), we decided to take a look at fast food and chain restaurant websites to see what, if any, effect the scuffle had on the availability of nutritional information.

We have good news. More restaurants are posting nutrition and allergen information than a year ago, and the information is featured more prominently on restaurant websites. There are a few exceptions, of course. A few restaurants have taken a step backwards or are treading water. Chains like Red Lobster, Applebee's and Olive Garden are notoriously unwilling to divulge too much information. Outback Steakhouse is full of suggestions on how to order healthier versions of their menu items, but that's about it. Quiznos has a list of low calorie menu items, but when you compare their information to Subway's website with its extensive nutrition section... well, you get the idea. For the most part, however, nutrition and allergen information is getting top billing on fast food websites, and that's a step in the right direction.

So without further ado:

Consumerist's Ultimate Fast Food Nutrition Guide: 2008

(Photo: Tom Simpson )

Here is the live audio and powerpoint from a recent presentation I gave called, "The 5 Things Your Customers Aren't Telling You." This is number 3, "Stop Hiding Behind Walls Of Robots." It's all about how companies think they're saving money by replacing humans with machines but sometimes machines can't do jobs as well as humans, especially when it comes to customer service. I brought the point to life with a funny little story about eBay and their wonderfully inept automated email response system. I hope you enjoy the video, including the intro and outro ditties I worked up on my girlfriend's old Yamaha synth.

(Photo: Tubes.)

10. Got any bank fees? Ask the bank to waive one as a courtesy
Most banks will give you at least one courtesy fee waive per year, but they won't do it unless you ask 'em first.

9. Lower Your APR by threatening to switch to another credit card company
Try saying this: "I think I've been a good customer. I'd like to stay with you, but I really want you to lower the rate on my card. Can you help me?"

8. Use a 0% balance transfer to get a reprieve from credit card interest for a few months
Many credit card companies offer 0% balance transfer deals where you can move your balance from another company's card to theirs, and enjoy 0% APR for a few months. Be careful to read all the rules though, because if you break some of them, you can shoot back up to your old rate or higher. Also the 0% is for a limited time, so mark your calendar and be prepared to shift your funds again.

7. Lower your cable bill by threatening to cancel
Many of our readers have had success with this one. Mention competing offers you've researched and ask for them to give you a reason to stick around.

6. Get your spending under control so you're paying off your credit card in full every month, and avoid paying extra interest
If you carrying a balance and paying finance charges on it, it amounts to an extra tax on everything you purchased. Why should you pay someone for your own money?

5. Pack your own lunch, make your own coffee, cook at home
Eating out is expensive, and those lattes add up. Rediscover the joy of cooking and you'll feel enriched in more ways than just your pocketbook.

4. Adjust your tax withholdings so you're not giving the IRS an interest-free loan
If you get a big ol rebate from the IRS, you may be claiming too few withholdings. I'm sure you know many better things to do with that money throughout the year than the IRS does. Here's how to do it.

3. Take advantage of new low interest rates by refinancing your home to a lower rate
Pay a little less each month and that can add up to several thousands of dollars in savings over the life of the loan.

2. Switch to paying for most things in cash only...
Money hurts more. Pay for things in physical cash and you may find yourself making better purchase decisions.
...And then put all your pocket change in a piggy bank
The piggy bank can now become your Wii fund, or your vacation fund, or your new wardrobe fund. When it gets full, take it to Commerce Bank's Penny Arcade and cash it in for free.

1. Make a budget
Simply monitoring your money forces you to be wiser with how you use it. I consider the personal budget the financial dashboard to making sure I'm master of my money instead of the other way around. Here's a few tools to get you started:

Consumerist's 9-Step Beginner's Budget
An excel sheet I made that does the job rather well, if I may say so myself.
The Zero Based Budget
The idea behind it is that every single dollar you earn will get allocated to a specific category. There is no money sloshing around, you have total mastery over all of your money.
How To Budget With An Irregular Income
Most budgets assume a steady paycheck, but if your income comes in spurts, here's a great way to still keep your bills paid and your money under control.
8 Free Personal Finance Management Programs (And 4 Pay Ones)
A roundup of Consumerist reader's favorite budget tools.

(Photo: Getty)

Glass-Steagall was passed under the Roosevelt administration in 1933 in direct response to the Wall Street shenanigans that ushered in the Great Depression where banks shoved their own depositors into buying the stocks the banks were dealing. The basic idea was to keep banks from speculating with the savings that American citizens were entrusting within their vaults.

Its repeal, under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, drafted and passed by a Republican congress, and signed by Billiam Jefferson Clinton, allowed commercial banks to merge with investment banks. For instance, Citigroup merged with Traveler's Insurance (although this merger was announced in 1998, before the act was passed, at the time Citigroup CEO Sanford I. Weill said that he spoke with the Feds and, "that over that time the legislation will change...we have had enough discussions to believe this will not be a problem.").

Now, on the one side they could sell mortgages to homeowners, and then invent fancy investment structures which they sold on Wall Street. Because they were "covered" on both ends, banks felt free to sell increasingly dicey mortgages, just so long as another sucker was picking up the garbage. This sucker was picking it up because he had a plan to repackage it and sell it to another sucker, and so on. Eventually we end up with no-doc stated income interest-only option-ARM no money down mortgages being repackaged as "sound investments" being sold as "stable assets" for city pension plans to park their money in. (See "Subprime Meltdown As Told By Stick Figures").

We can only imagine the level of machination exerted over those 30 years, but we do know this. Robert Rubin was Secretary of Treasury, which had oversight over Glass-Steagall regulation. Days before he resigned, Glass-Steagall was repealed. Just over a year later, he became chairman of the Citi executive committee, with an annual compensation of $40 million, a position he still holds, despite Citigroup's $24 billion in subprime-related losses.

(Photo: Joy Of The Mundane)

(I'm not certain about this one, but I think they only stopped doing Universal Default after the Senate held several hearings investigating some of the worst excesses of the credit card industry...).

I told her readers were complaining about APRs skyrocketing on perfectly good customers. She replied with a story about the Citi Dividend Card was put out with a 5% cashback reward. But the company was losing money left and right, so they had to to pull back and offer only 2%. There was a big backlash, but it was just a bad decision, it should have never been put out to market, she said. I pointed out that while that may be, to a customer it looks like a bait and switch.

I moved on to opaque contracts, some of which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a 2006 usability study to be written at the 27th grade level. I said that these contracts made it easier for the company to control their customers if their customers can't even understand what they're signing.

She told me that all the contracts are in fact written at the 7th grade level and that the reason why it has legalese is that it's written by lawyers.

Oh, ok, that makes it all better then! I didn't have a computer with me but if I did I would have liked to pull up this section from the GAO survey where a usability consultant tackled the gnarly and inscrutable language in credit card contracts. He took a section from a real credit card contract and rewrote it in plain talk:

Here's it translated from Klepdor:

First I needed someone to volunteer their Sprint cellphone number to test for research purposes. Intern Alex Chasick put out a request on his IM Away Message and within minutes Nathan (thanks Nathan!) offered up his number.

Next I went to a part on the Sprint website where you register for online account access. I filled out some account registration and then selected for Sprint to ask me a few questions to verify my identity so I could set up my PIN code. This is where it gets fun.

Alex is in his 20's and lives in the Washington DC area, so I figured that our mark is too. Just knowing that, I was able to answer all the questions correctly in the first shot. Here's what they were:

"Which of the following vehicle makes has been registered at the following address [redacted]?: Lotus, Honda, Lamborghini, Fiat, None of the Above."

I figure a college kid is not going to have a Lotus, Lamborghini, or a Fiat, so I went with Honda.

"Which of the following people have resided with you or used the same address as you at [redacted]? Jerry Stefl lii, Ralph Argen, Jerome Ponicki, John Pace, None of the above."

The extra space in Jerry's last name caught my eye. That looks like a data entry error, like the name was probably grabbed from an actual database instead of a generated fake name. So I went with that one.

"In which of the following cities have you NEVER lived or used in your address? Longmont, North Hollywood, Genoa, Butte, All of the above."

I've never heard of any of those cities being near DC, so I go with "all of the above."

And then, open sesame, I'm in.

From now on, for all intents and purposes, to Sprint I am Nathan. I can see Nathan's billing address, useful for if I wanted to conduct more identity theft. I could add services, take away services. I could order GPS tracking on his account and see exactly where he is in the world from any computer with internet access.

I could look in his call history and see all of his calls. I could change Nathan's billing to e-billing...

change his home address to a drop location,

....order a bunch of phones...

...and have them sent to my drop location, and then sell them on eBay, leaving Nathan stuck with the bill. (Sound familiar? We posted a Sprint complaint just like this, "Sprint Twiddles Thumbs While 12-Year Customers Get Scammed For $2,500." In that case, the Sprint fraud department said it was "probably someone inside Sprint" who did the exact scam above I just described to you). Remember, all I knew about this guy was his cellphone number, that he was in his 20's, and that he lived in DC. That's it. That's all it took to completely hijack his entire Sprint account.

When Jim reported it to Sprint, he says he, "called support (3 or 4 times. Surprisingly the last time I spoke with someone who realized the issue was a big deal, but she had no idea who to contact, and her supervisor only said to fill out a website feedback form. I then filled out a feedback form. Pretty sure that went nowhere. I then called the number you guys offer, 703-433-4401. I spoke with someone there who said they'd pass it on to the website team. They did mention they tested out the security question setting and found that nobody could guess anyone else's information..."

Here's a possible reason for why the hole exists. See, young people are less likely to have well developed credit histories and other public records from which to draw the possible answers for the identity verification, leading to what tipster Jim calls, "rather silly questions it's easy to guess the answers to...The point of a PIN is to identify me as a person, not just that it's someone who knows me."

Making this system even weaker, the questions seem to be based on public records. All at thief has to do is know your name in addition to your phone number and search these publicly accessible records.

In the comments on this post, a former Sprint rep says it's even worse than we thought. They say that every question about cars has three luxury models and one typical one. He says that "none of the above" for "which properties have you owned" was correct 99% of the time. And worst of all, you only need to answer two of the questions correctly to gain access to an account. I was shocked at the number of times I was able to access an account by simply guessing the answers," he writes. "Fortunately I am an ethical person, but if I wasn't I could've done a LOT of damage very easily."

Before posting this material, we reported it to Sprint. After looking into it for a day, the gave this official response:

Sprint works with an established third-party vendor that handles the customer verification process noted in your email. Currently, we are not aware of any instances of fraud occurring through the question and answer scenario that you've described; however, we continuously seek out ways to improve customer account security and we look for information from a variety of sources. Based on the information provided by the Consumerist, we immediately escalated the issue with our vendor partner so that it can make the necessary adjustments to ensure that our customer verification process remains secure. Customer privacy is a top priority and we appreciate the Consumerist bringing this matter to our attention.

All these steps add up to a matrix that can either reassure you or make you want to run the other way.

• Do they have a toll free customer service number and published hours of operation?
• Do they take credit cards? It is no guarantee of quality if they do, but it is one step up. I think you should generally avoid any place that only takes Western Union money transfers.
• Do they have a security/hacker prevention or testing certificate?
• Does the checkout process use an encrypted HTTPS page?
• Are the company Privacy and About pages blank, or do they look like they are from a default template for an online shopping cart that was just set up the day before?
• Search Google for the store name and words like "scam" and "customer service." It is not a good thing if all the entries are for people asking if a site is a scam in Yahoo Answers.
• [www.google.com]
  [answers.yahoo.com]
  [wiki.answers.com]
• Check the Whois to see what the website registration looks like. It is not a good sign if it was just registered last week. It should not look like someone is trying to hide the fact that they are running a business out of their parents basement.
• [www.geektools.com]
• Check the Traceroute to see what network it is running on. It should match the WhoIs info to some extent.
• [www.opus1.com]
• Check if the company has a yellow pages listing and street address. If you have a phone number, a company with a street address is a lot more reassuring. Check the address on Google Maps to see if it is a vacant lot or an address in a housing tract.
• [www.411.com]
• See if the site has a warning listed on McAfee SiteAdvisor.
• [www.siteadvisor.com]
• Check fraud and scam report sites. Some of them also list sites that have allegedly scammed other people.
• [edsbandwagon.com]
  [www.fraudbureau.com]
  [www.ripoffreport.com]
  [www.scambusters.com]
  [www.scamclub.com]
  [www.cybercrime.gov]
  [www.fraud.org]
• Beware of "Online Review" sites. Some are little more than a site for scammers to post fake positive reviews, and the owners to make money on banner ads. Here are some you can trust:
• [www.epinions.com]
  [reviews.pricegrabber.com]
  [www.bizrate.com]
  [www.resellerratings.com]
• BBB online. Lots of places do not have entries because they are small and treat their customers well enough to not get a complaint.
• [search.bbb.org]

  What techniques do you use to see if a site is legit? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  (Photo: Strobist)

1. RESEARCHING
Watch TV. Observe the items your friends and coworkers purchase. Read glossy magazines. All of these can be great sources of inspiration to find new things to buy. How do you know when it's time to buy something? It's easy. Just listen to you heart. Whenever it does a little jump and says "gimmie one of those," you know it's time to put on your shoes and go shopping.

2. SHOPPING
Amble your way towards the item you're looking for. Keep an eye out for products at eye level and placed at the ends of aisles, these are products stores especially want you to buy so it's best to grab a few of these and help stimulate the economy. Once at your item's location, a salesperson may appear to assist you with your purchase. They may offer helpful suggestions about additional accessories that can help make your product experience more enjoyable. Be sure to buy every one. If a salesperson offers to give you an extended warranty, take it. They're the product experts so they know what's best for you.

3. PAYING
If you don't have enough money to pay in cash, that's ok. That's why credit cards were invented. Not solvent enough to get a credit card? Irregardless of your credit history, there's a wonderful financial service out there called a "payday loan," conveniently located next to your favorite liquor store.

4. CUSTOMER SERVICE
If you have a problem with a product, or feel disappointed by its performance, you're probably using it wrong. Try reading the manual again, smart guy.

5. DISPOSAL
Once your purchase has a scratch on it or a new, better version comes out, it's time to throw it away. Just toss it in the trash can, or from the window of a moving car. Don't worry if it hits a Native American, he's used to it.

What tips do you use for being a better shopper? Let us know in the comments below.

(Photo: Getty)

This plan would consolidate a large number of regulators into roughly three big new agencies.

Bank supervision, now divided among five federal agencies, would be led by a Prudential Financial Regulator, which could send examiners into any bank or depository institution that is protected by either federal deposit insurance or other federal backstops. It would eliminate the distinction between "banks" and "thrift institutions," which are already indistinguishable to most consumers, and shut down the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Any effort to merge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the S.E.C. is likely to provoke battles.

Yet another proposal would, for the first time, create a national regulator for insurance companies, an industry that state governments now oversee.

Administration officials argue that a national system would eliminate the inefficiencies of having 50 different state regulators, who have jealously guarded their powers and are likely to fight any federal encroachment.

The federal insurance proposal is a huge giveaway for the insurance industry. Insurers would be able to evade strong consumer protections at the state level by opting-in to what would be comparably lax regulation from the Treasury Department. If approved, it is not unreasonable to expect higher rates and fewer protections.

The new Prudential Financial Regulator, which would gobble up the five regulators that currently oversee banks and creditors, could severely harm consumers. We don't yet know who would steer the massive new regulator, or whether they would emulate the destructive model of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which preempts state authority and then sits idly by as consumers are financially raped.

So what is the media focusing on?

Paulson couldn't just ignore the subprime meltdown, so he is proposing a Mortgage Origination Commission, which would set baseline qualifications for mortgage brokers and chastise states for failing to adequately regulate the industry.

The plan also calls for broad new authorities for the Fed to oversee the market, "in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system." The proposal would standardize emergency borrowing from the Fed's discount window. In exchange for allowing non-bank failures to sally up to the window and beg for cash, the Fed will claim the ability to thumb through their books and balance sheets "in order to protect the Federal Reserve (and thereby the taxpayer)."

It is doubtful the plan will become law this year, but is an important vehicle for framing the coming debate over regulatory authority. Congress is going to put its prints all over the plan before it passes. The devil is in the details and Congress must ensure that any new regulatory environment isn't hostile to strong consumer protections.

After all, even the Treasury Secretary acknowledges that his proposal may not be enough to prevent the next subprime meltdown: "At a fundamental level, the root causes of market instability are difficult to predict, and past history may be a poor predictor of future episodes of instability."

Treasury Dept. Plan Would Give Fed Wide New Power [NYT]
Treasury's Summary of Regulatory Proposal [NYT]

POPKEN: Would you say that consumers and companies are at war?

BURLEY: Oh yes. The mentality of companies and customer service departments these days is definitely that customers are the opposition. And this is large part due to the new business model that I uncovered at the Harvard Business School. It's called churn. It's represented by the fact that the three largest cellphone companies in America last year had 1/3 of their customers leave. Each company, over 1/3 of their customers turned over. How can these be successful companies? So what these companies are looking for is the largest number of sheep possible. It's astounding, isn't it?

POPKEN: POPKEN: Definitely, it's what we hear about all the time, and now we need some of the techniques that you describe in your book to be able to shift the balance. But before we get into those, I think it's important to set up a preface of who your book is NOT for. Because there's definitely certain situations and contexts...

BURLEY: I wrote the book for customers dealing with legitimate companies. This is not for scams. If somebody is the victim of a scam, a criminal scam, they need to go to their District Attorney. Because that's illegal activity. What I'm trying to do is level the playing field between consumers and legitimate companies. Where they're getting bad customer service, and, as you said, the subtitle of the book is Getting What You Paid For. And it's not to shake down a company or get revenge or bankrupt a company because that's not going to happen. It's not even about getting a letter of apology. Because actually what's a letter of apology worth from a corporation? I mean, it's an entity licensed by the state. If you've been cheated on a $200 cellphone bill, get the $200 and get it quickly. And that's what the techniques are designed to do. Level the playing field, show the consumer where their leverage is so that they can get what they paid, they can get their $200, they can get the product they paid for.

POPKEN: So where is the leverage, what is the fulcrum? Because the traditional advice that you might hear on the local news or in the "Consumer Corner" of the local newspaper is various things about "escalating," asking for supervisors, finding out the regulatory agencies, etc, but it sounds like what you're saying is there might be a different way of going about it, something swifter.

BURLEY: There's only one leverage any consumer has with a company. And that's financial. They don't care about your personal story, they don't care about the wedding photos that were missed, they care about the bottom line. And what consumers don't realize is that they really have a lot more leverage on the bottom line if they exercise certain of their constitutionally protected powers. And it isn't that they're going to take away their business. And it isn't that they're going to take away the business of their family. Because corporations now are multinational. One consumer, 10 consumers, they don't matter. But what we have, because of the information age, we have the leverage of hundreds of thousands of consumers, or even at the local level with just a little bit of effort. And this is the first story I tell in the book. Now I know that most people are not going to do this, but actually you don't have to. And if you read the first true story in the book you realize I didn't have to either.

POPKEN: I love that story. That's my favorite story in the book.

BURLEY: This is when I wanted to go out and buy my first new car. And I was so excited about it, and I went to the car dealer and I got a good bargain, and I got the floor mats tossed in. It was a great bargain except that I went home and read the paper on Sunday and realized they had a sale on that car. It was $1200 less than what I paid. And so I went back and said, "You overcharged me." And they said, "No, no, you didn't bring in the ad." And I said, "Well, it doesn't say I have to bring in the ad, this is just an open sale. Why didn't you give me the price?" They said, "I'm sorry, the contracts are done."

Well, of course at that point I wasn't sophisticated to realize that I had leverage and I went home and I stewed about it. Then I realized I did have some leverage. So I printed off a couple dozen fliers that said, "AKAMI motors doesn't treat their customers fairly, cheats their customers." And I put them in a folder, and I went back to the car dealer and put those folders on the desk of the sales manager and said, "Here is the equation. You can give me the $1200 that you owe me fairly." And this is the thing, it has to be fair, you can't shake down a company. But they rightfully owed me the $1200. Because they had advertised the car at the price. "You can give that to me or I can stand out in front of your car dealership for a handful of Saturdays. Now it's not going to give me my $1200, but I'm certainly going to feel better because I've exercised my constitutionally protected right of free speech to tell my true story." And you know that as a journalist we do have that right. Absolute protection against slander or libel is the truth.

POPKEN: What happened next?

BURLEY: I didn't have to stand out there. That sales manager did the math in his head, simply, talked it over with his managers, came back and said, "Mr. Burley we'll have a check ready for you in a few minutes." Because he realized that if I were to stand out there and make one customer go away, just one customer, realized, or believed what I was telling him, and they went to a different dealership, it would have cost him more than just dealing with me. And the rest of the techniques in the book all leverage in one way or another the customer's right of free speech telling their true story against the company's desire to do business. And that's why it has to work that way. But what it does is it does level the playing field.

When I was writing the book, one of my readers told a friend of his about the technique and she made some flyers. She's a rather quiet second-grade teacher. She made the flyers and she put them in a manila folder and went to a car dealership that had been stonewalling her over a lemon. She bought a car and it was just a lemon and they wouldn't let her do anything about it. Well she walked into that car dealership went up to the General Manager, and didn't even have to pull out the flyers. She called me later, and just knowing that she had an option helped her find the words. She got satisfaction just knowing that she had an option.

POPKEN: That's a great story because one of the things that some of my readers have talked about when I discuss your techniques, and what I have personally wondered, is how does the average person find the courage to stand up like that? There's the force of the crowd and no one wants to stand out. Do you just have to get angry enough?

BURLEY: As you know, none of the techniques require anyone to scream or yell or spit at great distances. As a matter of fact, those are disqualifiers. There's an old-school belief, yes, walking into the middle of a showroom and screaming at the top of your voice, "They cheated me!" These days that will get you escorted out by the security guard. A l