Consumerist: this american life

Listen To These Vigilantes Scam Nigerian 419 Scammers

Chris Walters — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:26:10 EDT

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.

Check out a 30-second promo of the episode here (mp3 file).

"Enforcers" [This American Life] (Thanks to Shannon!)
(Bear trap image: Getty)

Subprime Meltdown Driven By Nouveau Riche Countries With Too Much Money And Nowhere To Put It

Ben Popken — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:26:39 EDT

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.

At the same point, Greenspan told them that the interest rate on Treasury bonds was going to stay low for a long-ass time. The giant pool of money went to Wall Street to buy mortgages and there just weren't enough mortgages to go around, unless, somehow, more mortgages could be created... Plug this nugget into everything you learned from the Stickfigure Powerpoint Explanation Of The Subprime Mortgage Meltdown, and now you nearly know it all. The This American Life also does a good job of filling in the rest of the blanks of the bad decisions made by each person in the toxic money chain.

The Giant Pool of Money [This American Life]

(Photo: Getty)

Last week the best radio show ever, This ...

Ben Popken — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:14:17 EDT

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]

Ira Glass Rescues Coworker From MCI Hell

Ben Popken — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:37:12 EST

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!)

Worker Kept Quiznos Running Store After Owners Abandoned It

Ben Popken — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:25:03 EDT

Ben writes:

With all this guff about Quizno's, I thought I'd point you to an old episode of the public radio program This American Life, called "Backed Into A Corner." One of the segments describes the tale of a Seattle Quizno's line worker who gamely tried to run the place herself when the owners (franchisees of course) mysteriously abandoned the place. Needless to say, her appeals to Quizno's corporate fell on deaf ears and things trended from the merely difficult to the surreal. It's a strange, evocative true story, like just about everything else on the show.

Interesting piece from 2005. Note how the Regional Quiznos managers say there's nothing they can do (the stores are individually owned and operated) but after it hit the media, corporate swooped down all Azarel style, at least until the publicity died down. Then again, you would have to be crazier than those singing Quiznos monkeys to keep working there for a dollar a day. You can stream it from their archives. The bit starts at 8:05. — BEN POPKEN