From the AP:

The ad's tag line was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage."'

Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said Wednesday a billboard and some tunnel posters near a bus terminal in Toronto are still up and would be removed later in the day.

"Greyhound knows how important it is to get these removed and we are doing everything possible," Wambaugh said. "This is something that we immediately asked to be done last week, realizing that these could be offensive."
...
As horrified passengers fled the bus, Li severed McLean's head, displaying it to some of the passengers outside the bus, witnesses said.

A police officer at the scene reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim's body and eating them, according to a police report.

Wambaugh said the ads only appeared in Canada and that some in Ontario and western Canada have already been removed.

"Bus Rage" Ads Scrapped After Beheading [CBS News](Thanks, Nayeli!)
(Photo: AP)

"He basically pulled out a bottle of lighter fluid, poured it all over his body, pulled out a cigarette lighter and lit himself on fire," Bloomfield Police Capt. Chris Goul said.

The man, 62-year-old Emilio Saladriagas, entered the Bloomfield Rent-A-Center location Tuesday and asked to speak to a supervisor about the late payment notices and collection calls, says the Star-Ledger. When a manager was not available, he pulled out the lighter fluid.

Employees doused him with water and he is now in stable condition at the burn unit of a local hospital. He has not been charged with a crime because he did not make "overt or criminal" actions to harm anyone but himself, according to police. The employees are receiving counseling.

"We don't know if he had mental health issues or what sparked it," [police] said. "Employees said he'd always been a nice man."

If you're in debt and having a hard time dealing with the collection calls and notices, there's help available. The first thing to do is to familiarize yourself with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (PDF). If you're being harassed, you can sent a letter to the debt collector demanding that they stop contacting you. They do not have the right to keep contacting you simply to try to get you to pay. You can also do a little research and locate some free or low cost legal help in your area. If you have a lawyer, the debt collectors are required to contact the attorney instead of you. If the debt collectors don't follow these rules, you can sue them! Not being able to pay your bills can be a humiliating experience, but don't give up.

Newark man sets himself on fire [Star-Ledger] (Thanks, Andrew!)

The NYT explains:

In April, as part of its 2008-2009 budget, the state legislature passed what is being called the “Amazon Tax.” What’s new isn’t actually a change in the law—New York residents always owed tax on their purchases—it is an expansion of the law that is meant to force online retailers to collect the tax and send it to New York. Any company with physical operations in the state—such a store or office—already collects tax for the state.

Indeed, the state calculates that of the nation’s top 20 online retailers, 18 had already been collecting tax because they, like Dell and Staples, had operations in the state. The remaining two—Amazon and Newegg.com—have now registered to collect taxes.

The state now says tax must be collected by any online store that gets customers referred to them by Web sites based in the state.

Amazon's lawsuit is making its way through the courts, but a provision exempting them from retroactively owing tax on all prior purchases by NY customers if they signed up by June 1st forced the retailer to start collecting the tax. Overstock dropped all its NY affiliates and will not be collecting tax.

We suspect Overstock is going to get a lot more popular with New Yorkers pretty soon...

Let the Tax Collection Begin [NYT]
(Photo: Tom Simpson )

"Just thought you would like to see for yourself the kind of service Comcast delivers for a $150 a month."

You know, Bill. This happens to me every time I record football on CBS. (Full disclosure: I don't have Comcast.) I'm always having to record 60 minutes, too. It used to bug me, but I'm starting to like 60 minutes more and more every year... their consumer reporting is really interesting... I think it's a deliberate plot.

Anyway, you're not alone, we found another poor Comcast user whose DVR cut out. And another one. And another one. And it wasn't just Comcast either...

Personally, as someone who liked the Sopranos finale, I think it's almost better this way.

From Midtown Lunch:

I’m a regular reader of Midtown Lunch and I wanted to let you know that Carvel’s promotion today for free arctic and coffee blenders was a complete scam. I went to the only 2 Carvel stores in Midtown and was told at both locations that they were not giving away anything today. Actually, the douchebag working in Times Square didn’t even have the decency to say anything to me. When I asked him about the promotion he wagged his finger at me and then moved on to the next customer with no further acknowledgment or apology. The two bumbling idiots working in Penn Station claimed that they were not giving away any of the frozen drinks because they didn’t have any of the ingredients for them. I don’t know what’s going over there at Carvel but they better get their act straight or they’ll be a relic of the good ol’ days in the not too distant future. Ben & Jerry’s and Baskin Robbins pulled off their promotions without a hitch and probably won a lot of customers in the process.

Carvel’s antics will only drive more customers to their clearly more competent (and honest) competitors. Sorry for the rant. I just wanted to let you know so that perhaps you could inform our fellow Midtown Lunchers of Carvel’s deceitful sales tactics.

Damn, it's like there's an epidemic of stingy ice cream managers going on in New York City. First Ben & Jerry's shuts down "Free Cone Day" early and now this?

Did anyone else have problems getting their free drink at Carvel yesterday?

Airing of Grievances: Carvel is no Ben & Jerry’s
[Midtown Lunch]

I just started reading The Consumerist. I did a search on bedbugs to see if you had any posts, and then thought I'd tell you my own story after reading about the people who found bedbugs in a Santa Monica hotel. In August of last year, I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica.

The last night of my stay, I woke up about 2am, got up for a minute, but when I went back to bed, I saw a small bug crawling on my bed. Then I looked at the other bed, and saw another tiny brown bug. Grabbed kleenex, tossed them in the toilet, but every time I walked back to the beds, there were more of them. Most were tiny and brown, a couple of them were larger and a dark black/brown. Didn't know what they were, but I called down and asked the front desk to move me to a different room. Was creeped out, but didn't think anything of it until three mornings after I returned home, I woke up covered in bites. Did some research, and figured out that they were bedbug bites (three bites in a row, that swelled up and were very itchy). The pictures I found matched the bugs I saw on the bed in the hotel room. I had to go back to that hotel the following week (for work, the company booked the room) and I told them that I had found bugs in my home which matched the bugs I found in their hotel. Got a gee, that's too bad response.

Once I confirmed with an exterminator that I did have bedbugs, I called the hotel again. Got another gee, that's too bad response, but they did refund the cost of the stay (about $950). Over the next month and a half ( the time it took to get the exterminator to my apartment and then get the treatment) I spent about $5000 on dry cleaning, storage supplies, the exterminator, and moving out of my apartment during the two-week treatment. I called the hotel again, and asked them to cover those costs. Since then, I've been given the run around, ignored by the hotel manager, passed off to corporate who said gee, that's too bad but it's up to the hotel, and finally given over to a risk management/insurance firm for InterContinental Hotels. This firm has called me a liar, said that I didn't have proof of bedbugs being in my apartment because even though I found them in my apartment and the exterminator confirmed what they were and treated, the exterminator never wrote down specifically that they found bedbugs, that because I didn't go to the doctor and have the doctor confirm that the bites were from bedbugs that I had no proof that they were indeed bedbug bites, and now will not return phone calls. They say that the hotel exterminator checked all the rooms and found no evidence of bedbugs, even though the hotel told me that their exterminator wasn't looking only for bedbugs, just does a bi-weekly sweep for general problems and didn't find anything.

I'm staying after them, but the worst thing I can wish on them is not that I go to court, sue them and they lose - it's that the hotel management and the people from this risk management company all bring home bed bugs and have to go through the sheer hell that is getting rid of them.

Regards,
Sarah

Here's some advice for travelers from Harvard University (PDF):

During travel, before you check into a hotel, check into the mattress. Carefully remove the sheets and examine the head section of the bed, look at the seams of the mattress as well as both sides of the head board. If you see any small insects in either of these locations, they are probably bed bugs.

Bringing your favorite pillow along on your travels may increase the chances of this pillow becoming infested with bed bugs and the transport of these bed bugs back to your home. If you have a favorite pillow, make sure it is encased in a bed bug proof sealed pillow case.

Remember not to place your luggage next to the bed. Find a location as far from the head of the bed as possible, and store your luggage in this location. This same principal applies to portable radios and other items that could conceal bed bugs.

If you do see bed bugs or think you have been bitten by bed bugs during your travel, it is extremely important to report this incident to the hotel management or else other unsuspecting individuals may meet the same fate.

Any readers been through what Sarah is going through? Advice?

(Photo:Getty)

I signed a contract with Sprint in 2004, things were going great. My husband and I decided to move in January 2007 and needed a phone service that reached our area...Sprint did not. Now, pay close attention to the dates..... I called Sprint in January of 2007 and told them that I would like to cancel my contract with them. They explained to me that my contract which I opened in 2004 was up to expire in three months, three months being March of 2007. I said fine, I will continue to pay the monthly bills until such time but DO NOT want to renew the contract because I had already secured another cell phone carrier, Verizon. They said, well can we offer you a free phone to keep you around? I said NO, just please DO NOT renew my contract. So three months go by and I sit down one day to pay my bills and what do you know.....there's a phone bill from Sprint. I started to make phone calls, but...every single time I entered in my account number to speak with a customer representative, DISCONNECTED. So I thought, let me try to write some emails...they can't hang up on emails...but they definitely IGNORED THEM! Now, let me explain that I work with an organization that closely monitors my credit report and cannot take the chance of ANYTHING being reported to a collections agency so month after month I paid a bill for a phone that I no longer used...HELL I couldn't even find the damn phone. So fast forward to February of 2008, I FINALLY got to speak with a customer service representative that had a ton of attitude. I explained to her that I have been trying to have this phone disconnected for over a year. She said well, I can disconnect the phone for you but it will cost $200 since your contract doesn't expire until 2009. I said no mam, that is incorrect, my contract should have expired in March of 2007. She said, No, it's 2009. I asked to speak with a supervisor, she said "HOLD" and nobody ever came back to the line. So today APRIL 10, 2008 I get a bill for $268.00. I call the Finance Department at Sprint. I ask why would I pay $268 for a disconnection fee if my contract ended in March of 2007. She stated that I would have had to of signed or verbally gave approval in 2006 to renew the contract but they don't keep records going back that far......EXCUSE ME??? What do you mean you don't keep records going back only 2 years??? I said, NO, I NEVER signed or gave a verbal approval of anything, infact, I tried to cancel this phone over a year ago and got the run around. She said well sorry mam, but you will either have to pay this or we will send it to collections. Again, SPRINT is not worth my job, so today APRIL 10, 2008 15 MONTHS LATER I am out a grand total of $988.00 for a phone that I HAVEN'T USED!!! Needless to say, I will NEVER use Sprint again and after speaking to family and friends about this situation who all use SPRINT...they will NOT be renewing their contracts and a couple will be calling to cancel. DON'T MESS WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS...cause in the end you will be the one losing! BASTARDS. Thanks for letting me rant.

Next, you may want to try to launch an eecb (Executive Email Carpet Bomb) on Sprint. You might want to remind them how angry the Minnesota Attorney General is about the 30,000 complaints she's received about Sprint extending contracts without customer consent. Sprint has a new commercial that invites you to email the CEO at dan@sprint.com. We suspect you'll get a canned response, but we'd love to be wrong about that.

Finally, if that doesn't work, why not file a lawsuit in small claims court? Bring all the evidence you can get from Sprint that shows you never used the phone. If you're lucky, they won't even show up and you'll get a default judgment.

Does anyone else have any advice for Kristin?

(Photo:Maulleigh)

Over at the Trusted Adviser blog there was a bit of a customer service showdown going on between the DMV and the cable company... and well, see if you can guess which operation "Judy" is dealing with:

Judy called XYZ about a common transaction. "Sure," they said, "here's what you need to bring, and we'll take care of you."

She gets there: "What? Who told you that! You need to go back home and bring the other thing."

She returns. "You can't do this, your ex-husband's name is on the records. We need a copy of the twelve-year old divorce decree, plus his signature on a form. We don't have that form, but we'll fax it to you."

Days later. "Who told you we could fax that to you? We can only mail it."

More days. "We need to confirm your social security number." She gives it to them. "Sorry, we can't match it; we don't have records of your social security number." "Then what were you going to match it to?!" Judy asks. We have entered Kafka-land some time ago.

At last, Judy leaves with the desired outcome. It turns out to be wrong.

On returning yet again, it's, "well, who in the hell gave you that? It's obviously wrong. Hey lady stop screaming—no need to take out your personal problems on us!"

OK, that was—drumroll—the Cable Company! Comcast of West Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.

And that means—yes, people, believe it or not—the raging success story is the New Jersey DMV. Lately renamed the Motor Vehicle Commission.

Customer Service Showdown: The Cable Company vs the DMV [Trusted Adviser] (Thanks, Ian!)
(Photo:u2acro)

Earlier in the month, rival Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. said it would refund close to $21 million under a similar agreement.

The AG's office says it received hundreds of complaints from consumers who were charged the fees retroactively after cruises had been booked and deposits had been made. This (silly) settlement will affect about 1.1 million bookings, says the South Florida Business Journal. The Florida AG alleges that the surcharges were not properly disclosed.

Carnival agrees to refund fuel fees [BusinessWeek]
Carnival to refund $40M in fuel fees [BizJournals]
(Photo:herkie)

The NFL says they must offer the channel on basic cable or not at all.

Comcast says they can do whatever they damn well please because they are the cable company and the NFL channel is the NFL channel.

Consumers just wish they'd work it out.

From Sports Illustrated:

The appeals court said the contract language between Comcast and the network were too "ambiguous" to rule in favor of either side.

The NFL sued Comcast in October 2006 after the cable company told the NFL that it had decided to move the network from a regular digital tier that is seen by seven million viewers to a sports tier with about 750,000 viewers.

NFL, Comcast headed back to court [SI] (Thanks, Ferio!)
(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Prosecutor Robert Bernardi said Evesham Township police went to the couple's home in the Marlton section of the township around noon after a male caller asked them to check on Marci Buczynski's welfare. Her body was found in a bedroom.

Authorities would not provide further details on her death, saying only that she was pronounced dead at the scene and that an autopsy would be performed sometime Saturday by the county medical examiner's office.

About 20 minutes after her body was found, officers from the Delaware River and Bay Authority Police Department received reports that a man - later identified as Walter Buczynski - had parked his car on the bridge and jumped from the span.

Crews continued to search for his body Friday night.

Bernardi said a motive for the murder-suicide was not immediately clear. The couple's children were being cared for by family members, Bernardi said.

Mortgage exec kills wife, self [AP]
(Photo: Bob Jagendorf)

From the NY Daily News:

Wednesday morning, the younger George Raynor went to Alma Family Dental Services on Brighton Beach Blvd. and spoke to a woman working at a store on the ground floor of the dental office. She said she saw the dentist put a woman, his mom, on the street.

"The dentist brought her down," the woman told him. "She was sitting on the sidewalk and they closed the door."

Primitivo Ahuatl, 31, the food vendor who found Villemin on Tuesday, said she was slouched on a stoop, her mouth foaming. "Her eyes were closed, her face was too red," he said.

The younger Raynor said he went to Poperetchny's office and confronted another doctor leaving with a bag of documents. "I tried to stop him, but he didn't want to talk to me," the son said.

The son stayed in the hallway crying hysterically until Poperetchny, who police say is not a licensed dentist, came out to talk to him.

"He said, 'How's Colette? How's she doing?'" Raynor said.

But then the dentist broke down and said, "I'm so sorry. I got scared. I'm sorry."

When cops arrived moments later, Poperetchny, 47, began throwing pages from an appointment diary out the window, Raynor said.

Phony dentist puts ill patient out on Brooklyn street [NY Daily News]
(Photo:NY Daily News)

"The officers had no knowledge of any of Ms. Gotbaum's personal issues. They had not been apprised of any calls from the family to the airport seeking to locate Ms. Gotbaum."[CNN] (Thanks, DJ Bambino!)

Gotbaum, who had attempted suicide twice before, was supposed to meet a friend at the airport. The friend didn't show, and Gotbaum, who was on her way to an alcohol treatment center in Tucson, got drunk and missed her flight, according to airline workers.

From the Daily News:

The daughter-in-law of city Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum frantically dialed home when Phoenix ticket agents refused to let her board a flight to a stint in alcohol rehab.

"They are not letting me on! It's all falling apart," Carol Anne Gotbaum told her husband, Noah, before she dropped the phone at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, witnesses said.

Noah Gotbaum called back, desperately trying to persuade the U.S. Airways Express agent to calm his wife and let the mother of three board the plane for the $42,000-a-month Cottonwood de Tucson rehab program, friends and witnesses said.

"It will be okay. She just needs to take her medication. ... She hasn't taken it today," an airline worker said Noah Gotbaum begged. His wife was taking prescriptions for anxiety and depression, sources said.

The airline agent called Phoenix police, who soon grappled with and cuffed the distraught 45-year-old, then shackled her to a bench in an airport holding area Friday.

Less than an hour later, Carol Anne Gotbaum was dead, apparently strangled by the 16-inch chain used to hook her handcuffs to the bench.

Another says, "She got her cell phone, broke it on a couple of customers and she threw it on the floor, hit them."

Carol Anne Gotbaum's desperate last call [Daily News via Gothamist]
Passenger Describes Gotbaum Incident in Phoenix [WCBS]

The public advocate has released a statement, according to the NYT:

Saying it appeared that her stepdaughter-in-law had been "manhandled" by police officers before her death in police custody in Phoenix on Friday, New York City's public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, called yesterday for an investigation into the circumstances of the death.
...
"The family has not reached a conclusion as to whether her care and treatment were inappropriate, but the circumstances were highly unusual," Mr. Manning [lawyer] said. "This woman — who was 5 foot 7, less than 110 pounds — was without doubt emotionally disturbed, and at this stage the family understands why the Phoenix Police Department intervened, but it's what happened after the intervention that causes us concern."
...
"We are not jumping to any conclusions, but the circumstances surrounding Carol's death appear to be unusual enough to raise serious questions and warrant a thorough investigation," [Betsy Gotbaum] said. "She cried out for help at the airport, but her pleas appear to have been met by mistreatment."

NYC Public Advocate's Relative Who Died at Airport Was Heading to Rehab [Fox News]
Gotbaum Seeks Investigation Into Death [NYT]
Family seeks answers in airport death [Arizona Republic]

The woman was placed in handcuffs and taken to a holding cell where she was found dead sometime later. It's suspected that she may have been trying to escape the handcuffs and accidentally choked herself to death, but the exact cause of death is unknown.

From USA Today:

Carol Ann Gotbaum, 45, of New York, was arrested Friday at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after a conflict with gate crews who refused to allow her to board a plane, said Sgt. Andy Hill, a Phoenix police spokesman.

The airline said the plane was already preparing to depart. She was rebooked on the next flight, but "she became extremely irate, apparently running up and down the gate area," US Airways spokesman Derek Hanna said Saturday.

Officers handcuffed her and took her to the holding room, where she kept screaming, authorities said. Hill said officers checked on her when she stopped screaming and found her unresponsive.

Hill said it appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, became tangled in the process and the cuffs ended up around her neck. A cause of death will be determined by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner.

Woman dies after airport arrest [USAToday]
(Photo:Roebot)