Consumerist
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healthcare
"This American Life" On Health Insurance's Fine Print
A recent episode of This American Life-the fine, fine public radio show-has an excellent piece on the health insurance industry's use of "rescission." This is when people with individual insurance policies come down with an illness (or get pregnant) and the insurance company denies coverage by claiming it was a preexisting condition. More » -
vigilantes
Listen To These Vigilantes Scam Nigerian 419 Scammers
Last week, "This American Life" featured a 30-minute piece on people who scam the scammers—in this case, three guys who prey upon small-time Nigerian con men and try to trick them into placing themselves in mortal danger. "This American Life" tells how they almost got a guy to enter a Western Union office in Chad carrying an anti-Muslim/pro-Bush note that announces his intention to rob the place. Whether you think these stunts are funny probably depends on your level of empathy even for criminals, and whether you think the avengers ever fully succeed. But c'mon, getting someone in another country to hold up a sign that's offensive in your language is pretty much always funny. More » -
this american life
Subprime Meltdown Driven By Nouveau Riche Countries With Too Much Money And Nowhere To Put It
The fuel and engine for the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and the credit crunch was Allen Greenspan and the doubling of the global monetary supply, according to the This American Life episode "The Giant Pool of Money" I just got around to listening to. Basically, a bunch of poor countries got rich all of a sudden selling TVs and the like, and in 6 years, doubled the worldwide supply of money. The giant pool of money was hungry for places to invest itself. More » -
Last week the best radio show ever, This American Life, tackled the housing and credit crisis by talking to some of the real people involved with packaging junk no-proof loans into "sensible" investments. In the words of host Ira Glass and friends, it all comes back to "The Giant Pool Of Money." [This American Life]
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audio
Ira Glass Rescues Coworker From MCI Hell
One of the producers over at the lovely This American Life radio show was overbilled by MCI (which has since merged with Verizon) for $946.36 and was sent to collections and told lie after lie that they were going to fix the problem. It's not until host Ira Glass gets involved and starts recording the customer service calls that her issue is finally resolved. The account is credited, the company apologizes, and the Senior VP of Customer Service send her a gift basket of cheese chocolates and crackers. Aw. You can listen to the story here, it's the second act, about 30 minutes into the show.
It's clear, sometimes the only way to get a company to not screw you over is to become a threat. Luckily, you don't have to work on a national radio show to get leverage, you can employ many of the wonderful techniques described in The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back.
253: The Middle of Nowhere [This American Life] (Thanks to Mike!)
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