Is loving New Moon a crime? It is, if you accidentally tape it during your sister’s surprise birthday party at the movie theater. Plus, how you will end up paying for Hulu after the Comcast/NBC merger, Oscar Meyer shaved meat, subprime loan gangstas, and a pacifier you might choke on. Now that we have a video show, what should my signoff be? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Stories covered in this episode:

Why A Comcast/NBC Merger Is Bad News
Charged With Felony After Taping 4 Minutes Of “New Moon”
Sample Phone Scripts Used By Sleazy Subprime Lenders In 2005
This Freshly Shaved Deli Meat Is Making Me Uncomfortable
Pay Off $50k In Debt On A $20k Salary In 10 Steps And 5 Years
Recall Roundup: Slim Faster Edition
Our Gift To You: The Consumerist Anti-Gift Card

TRANSCRIPT:

SHAVED MEAT – SUBRIME LOAN GANGSTAS – THE PACIFIER YOU MIGHT CHOKE ON – AND A SECRET EXECUTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE NUMBER, all this and more, in Consumerist.com’s top stories for the week ending December 6th, 2009. I’m Ben Popken.

This week. GE announced it will sell NBC to Comcast. Don’t worry, your favorite shows are safe, they’re just going to start throttling the jokes on 30 Rock to one per minute. Also, Hulu will remain free. Just for every video you watch, you will be shot in the face.

A woman was arrested and charged with a felony for taping 4 minutes of the “New Moon” movie during her sister’s birthday party at a local cinema. With the recession on, it’s more important than ever that, as theater managers, we discourage large groups of people from seeing our horny vampire and horny werewolf movies.

Vintage phone scripts surfaced this week used in 2005 by subprime loan salesman. Here’s a shot of what they looked like. You know we’re in trouble when they’re actually printing the word “gangsta” on their reference materials. Thing is, this crap worked. ” The guy who wrote this document had 3 ferraris. He now lives in his mom’s basement and uses a go-phone, but back in 2005, he was king of the call center.

Oscar Meyers is running a new ad for their Deli Fresh Turkey Breast slices proudly declares that its meat is “shaved” no less than 3 times. They even made an arrow to it, and on the arrow, it says, “special.” You got that right.

This week we ran the story of a woman who paid off $50,000 in debt using 10 simple steps. Attention spans being what they are, I’ll break it down to just two: Earn more, spend less.

Now it’s time for TOTAL PRODUCT RECALL, the latest and greatest in defective products that were recalled recently. The way the format works is I say the product and then say the hazard for which it was recalled:

Cans of ready-to-drink Slim-Fast (all flavors) – bacterial contamination
Children’s hooded sweatshirts from Century 21 Promotions- strangulation
Perfect Flame SLG Gas Grills (sold at Lowe’s) – Fire and Burn
EXO-Tech Safety Harness – falling
Cost Plus World Market stainless steel cookware – handles can fall off; burn
Alpine Ski Bindings – bindings may release unexpectedly, perhaps while skiing down a double black diamond
Teamwork Trading pendants – lead
Electrolux ICON and Kenmore Pro 30 Gas Ranges – carbon monoxide poisoning
Haier America blenders – laceration
“Bobby Chupete” pacifiers – choking.

Consumerist released its anti-gift card this week. This is a card that looks like a gift card and even has a kind of magnetic strip on it. What you do is take this card, stick some cash next to it, and then give it to someone. The Consumerist anti-gift card is better than any retailer gift card because you can use it at any store, it doesn’t expire, there’s no hidden fees, and it’s backed by the full faith and trust of the US government, so, as long as they keep paying the electricity bill at the mint, you’re set.

Get yours by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to Consumerist Anti-Gift Card
101 Truman Avenue
Yonkers, NY 10703

EXECUTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE NUMBER OF THE WEEK

HSBC Card & Retail Services
James R. Lane
Vice President, Executive Resolutions
831-772-6248
james.r.lane@us.hsbc.com

::END TRANSCRIPT

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