legalese
Time Warner has revised their Subscriber Agreement to lay the legal foundation needed to implement consumption based billing, including usage caps, tiered rate plans, overlimit fees, and speed throttling. Though Time Warner's
metered broadband plans lie in shambles after a barely-averted run in with Congress' legislative mace, the cable giant clearly has no intention of letting such a potentially massive cash cow escape from the paddock. Inside, the dangerous new legalese that may soon appear in teeny tiny print on your next Time Warner bill.
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chargebacks
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.
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minimum payments
Is your
Washington Mutual credit card set to receive automatic payments? If it is, and you pay anything less than the full balance, then come March 6, you'll be paying only the monthly minimum. Why? Because it's an easy way for Chase, WaMu's new corporate overlord, to make money off unsuspecting cardholders...
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at&t
Do you want to know if AT&T boosts your rates? Maybe you want to pay only for services you ordered or explicitly authorized. Tough! AT&T's new 2,500 page "guidebook" is the
latest spawn of California's failing experiment with deregulation, one that is in "direct violation" of the law, according to the Public Utilities Commission.
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terms and conditions
A reader wrote in to ask us if we've ever seen anything like the
"Chargeback Abuse Policy" that Luxury Car Tuning in Las Vegas includes in their terms—"You agree not to file a credit card or debit card chargeback with regard to any purchase," and if you do anyway, you have to pay any fees that normally the merchant must pay when dealing with a chargeback. The reader wants to know, "Is this allowed by any merchant agreement that you know of? Sounds pretty ridiculous to me. How likely would it be that they could get away with this?"
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rebates
Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna is reminding consumers to
read the fine print on rebate offers before giddily pouncing on a seemingly hot deal. We are rebate skeptics; they are nice when they work, but should never be a deciding factor when weighing a purchase. The Attorney General has a few tips to help improve your chances of successfully redeeming a rebate:
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paypal
PayPal has instituted new restrictions on its $15 off $30 rebate introduced two weeks ago. At first we thought the offer, $5 less than the rebate offered last winter, meant PayPal hated spring. We were wrong. PayPal hates you.
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wells fargo
Wells Fargo touts its prepaid VISA gift cards as "the perfect gift" and has sold over a million, but perhaps they would sell a little less if people knew about these terms and conditions, flushed out by
Mouse Print:
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Consumerist
Tipster Paul quips, "perhaps they should invest in a 'techonology' like spell check..." [Office Depot]
mouseprint
