cvs
Lisa sent us a short angry email about her local CVS, and how it treats local teens. Her local store separates customers into two lines, and the line containing the 18 and under crowd is only allowed into the store two at a time. The store employees say it's to keep down shoplifting. Lisa thinks it's blatant ageism, and she's avoiding the store from now on. Teens can be annoying, but did CVS cross the line in punishing all for the bad actions of a few? Read her letter and leave your comments, inside.
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receipt checking controversy
The epic conflict between shoppers and receipt checkers continues! Reader Michael was unwilling to wait in line to have his cart searched, prompting Wal-Mart to threaten to file a police report as they wrote down his license place...
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BoingBoing notes that the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the notorious PRO-IP bill that " puts local law enforcement in a position to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. Which means that instead of the RIAA simply trying to collect fines, they can also incite local authorities to collect all the computers and related gear that was used to pirate." [
BoingBoing ]
(Thanks, John!)
bad company
Today, MP3tunes' CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service. (And we're not using a euphemism here—it really
is a backup/place-shifting service and not a file sharing site in disguise.)
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rectal exams
Remember Brian Persaud, the Brooklyn construction worker who tried to sue a New York hospital for performing a by-the-books rectal exam on him in 2003? On Monday, a Manhattan jury
tossed his lawsuit, claiming he failed to show he suffered assault and battery. This means we'll never get to hear both sides splitting hairs about what constitutes a full "rectal examination"—Persaud says the doctor did it, and the doctor says she didn't.
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parody
Score one for the First Amendment:
A Conyers man may continue criticizing Wal-Mart with parodies on T-shirts that compare the retail giant to the Holocaust and al-Qaida terrorists, a federal judge has ruled.
Timothy Batten in Atlanta ruled that Charles Smith may maintain his Web sites, www.walocaust.com and www.walqaeda.com. Smith also may continue to sell novelty, satirical merchandise that criticizes the company, the judge said.
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airport security
A PR hack sent us a stupidly long press release a few hours ago about Clear, the company that—for an annual $100 fee—will pre-authorize you with TSA to speed up your passage through security. Clear started operating in select airports over a year ago, and this month will add Reagan National and Dulles International airports to its list. So, is the service worth it? We guess that depends on how much you're willing to spend to be able to jump ahead of all the poor people waiting in line like the common criminals they surely are. We wanted a slightly more objective way to evaluate it, though, so we started looking around online for first-hand experiences of what exactly happens when you flash your Clear card.
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censorship
The reader who sent
Go Daddy an email asking why they
shut down RateMyCop.com received a response in which they emphatically denied any censorship—this was all about a customer exceeding his contracted server usage limits and nothing else, they say. Read their full response after the jump.
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censorship
Yesterday,
Go Daddy pulled the plug on RateMyCop.com, which has been criticized by
law enforcement officials for allegedly putting police officers in danger by listing their names and in some cases badge numbers. Visitors can then add comments and post critiques or praise about specific cops in their area. The website collected its officer data via public information requests, and no personal information is used, nor are undercover agents revealed. Still, law enforcement officials are upset at the exposure. When the site's owner, Gino Sesto, called
Go Daddy, he was first told it was removed due to "suspicious activity," but then the reason was changed by a supervisor to an exceeded bandwidth cap, which Sesto disputes.
Update: Go Daddy responded to our reader's email and said taking the site offline had nothing to do with censorship.
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receipt controversy
Reader J was detained and harassed by some Walmart employees on his way out of the store the other day. J had already put his receipt inside his wallet after purchasing a $25 shower rack when a Walmart employee demanded to see his receipt. J declined and continued exiting the store. That's when things got weird. First, he was grabbed by a Walmart employee, then another customer started pushing him back inside the store.
Yesterday (2-28-08) late afternoon I bought a $25 shower rack at the Wal-mart in [redacted] New Hampshire, and then tucked the receipt safely inside my wallet so I wouldn't lose it in case I had to return the item. The cashier did not bag the shower rack, so after I was done at the register I picked up my item and headed for the door. As I was approaching the door, the receipt checker Bob said, "Do you have your receipt?" To which I responded, "Yes, it's in my wallet" and I kept walking towards the door. Behind me, I could hear him yell "Sir! Sir! I need to see your receipt!", but being an avid Consumerist reader, I knew I didn't need to stop, so I kept walking. Bob ran up in front of me and stood between the slider doors, blocking my exit and budging me back inside. Appalled that the Wal-mart employee had just touched me, I said "excuse me", but Bob refused to budge, demanding again to see my receipt. I attempted to walk around him, but he kept stepping in front of me, and I would bounce off of him. Now, I was bigger than Bob, but I didn't wish to get physical and blow the situation out of proportion.
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rights
Back in those lazy summer days of August,
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer signed a "
passenger bill of rights" into law—requiring airlines who keep passengers on a grounded airplane more than 3 hours to provide water, snacks, fresh air and a working toilet.
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lawsuits
Over at the Consumer Law & Policy blog there is a post about the legal troubles of Justin Leonard, the owner of
InfomercialScams.com, a site that posts unedited reviews of various infomercial products.
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subprime meltdown
When an apartment building is foreclosed on, the tenants are usually evicted—whether the new buyer wants them or not, says the
Boston Globe:
Stephen O'Brien wants to buy a foreclosed apartment building on Warwick Street in Roxbury. He wants to keep the ground-floor tenant, James Evans, 77, who is partially blind and living on Social Security.
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sweatshops
With
the Gap embarrassed this week by reports that Indian children as young as 10 were
making Gap Kids clothing, a lot of people are asking, just how frequently and to what degree do large U.S. companies like Gap and Wal-Mart monitor their foreign manufacturers? According to Slate,
"anywhere from six months to once every several years." Unfortunately, because the visits are usually announced ahead of time, factories can hide violations, coach employees on what to say, get rid of the child workers, and forge records. In China, there are consultants who will prepare a factory for inspection, going so far as to fake missing records.
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Media companies including CBS Corp., Microsoft Corp., News Corp.'s Fox and MySpace, Viacom, Walt Disney and NBC have all agreed to some über-pact of copyright "guidelines" to protect their work, and have said they will announce the details later today. "The agreed principles include using technology to eliminate copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites and blocking any material before it is publicly accessible." [
Reuters]
commerce
The city of Portsmouth, Va. certainly seems to think so. An
ice cream vendor who has been fined repeatedly for playing music from his truck has challenged the city's regulations, claiming that they are a violation of his constitutional rights.
Sanchez drives a truck for Norfolk-based Jumpn' G's Ice Cream. He was convicted three times this summer in Portsmouth General District Court for the illegal use of noise from an ice cream truck.
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whoops
Verizon recently rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, to make Verizon's network available for their opt-in text message program.
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