While Amazon continues to deflect criticism of its workplace culture, the retailer announced plans to nearly double its workforce this holiday season: adding 100,000 temporary workers to its roster. [More]
Retail Services
Amazon Expands Restaurant Delivery Service To Portland, OR
By 10.20.15
Consumers in Portland, OR, hungry for a nice dinner, but too tired to actually head out into the world, can now order via Amazon’s newly expanded Prime restaurant delivery service. Using the Prime Now mobile app, members of Amazon’s $99/year subscription program can view participating restaurants, browse menus, place orders and track the status of their delivery. Once an order is placed, Amazon delivery drivers pick up and deliver the food within an hour or less. The service first launched last month in Seattle. [Amazon] [More]
Why Lower Gas Prices Are Really Good For Restaurants
By 10.19.15
When gasoline prices fall, that means that consumers who drive have more money to spend on things other than fuel. The JPMorgan Chase Institute, a global economics think tank affiliated with the bank, analyzed their customer credit and debit card data to figure out what we did with all of those savings. It may not surprise you that most of it didn’t go into our retirement accounts. [More]
Target Partners With ThredUP To Let You Trade In Old Clothes For Gift Cards
By 10.19.15
Target knows you’ve probably got a bunch of old clothes you don’t wear but which are otherwise fine. It also wants you to spend money at Target buying new clothes (and groceries, and anything else). So now it’s willing to trade you some gift cards for your dust-gathering outfits. [More]
Rare Grocery Growth Ray Sighting At Costco: Detergent Grows By 10 Pods
By 10.19.15
While detergent pods still have some safety issues and still sort of look a little bit like candy, here’s one inspiring piece of news about them. A few weeks ago, we wrote about Costco’s Kirkland Signature pods shrinking, losing 10 pods from a 130-pod package. Costco contacted us to point out that our reader actually got this backwards: they had recently made the packages bigger, not smaller. [More]
Amazon PR And NY Times Editor Still Fighting Over Article About Amazon From August
By 10.19.15
It’s a little strange to watch representatives of two of the most powerful retail and media companies in the country have a war of words on the blogpages of the platform Medium. Two months ago, the New York Times ran an article about Amazon’s workplace culture based on more than 100 interviews with current and former employees, some of whom didn’t want to be named. Now, representatives of Amazon and the Times are engaging in a war of words over the credibility of the named interviewees, and the nature of the story itself. [More]
Home Depot Customer Sues For $250K Over $28 Late Fee
By 10.19.15
Earlier this year, Home Depot charged an Oregon customer a $28 late fee for allegedly missing a payment on his store line of credit. The subsequent dispute over that fee resulted in more fees, a 100-point drop in the customer’s credit score and now a $250,000 lawsuit against the retailer. [More]
In Sale Flyer, ‘Only At Macy’s’ Means ‘Not Necessarily At Macy’s’
By 10.19.15
One Boston shopper found what looked like an amazing deal on shirts at Macy’s, advertised in the weekly flyer. Unfortunately, Macy’s now seems to regard their flyer as a random assortment of product pictures and disclaimers. The item wasn’t available at his local Macy’s, and employees just sort of shrugged. [More]
If You Want To Use Amazon Fresh You’ll Have To Pay $299/Year For PrimeFresh First
By 10.19.15
How much are you willing to pay to have bags of fresh produce, and other grocery items delivered to your door anytime of the year? If you live in Seattle, Philadelphia, or New York, Amazon’s hoping $299/year is the magic number. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Find Strange And Useless WebTV
By 10.16.15
Do you remember the WebTV? You may not have even known anyone who used them, but they were a device that turned a regular TV into a slow Internet terminal. Some people who find computers intimidating really liked the idea. However, they should not pick up this unit that Liz found on the shelf at her local Walmart, mostly because there’s not much you can do with it. [More]
Drug Abuse Prevention Advocates Not Cool With Novelty Pens That Look Like Hypodermic Needles
By 10.15.15
In the midst of a nationwide heroin and opioid drug crisis, some parents, teachers and drug abuse prevention advocates are up in arms over novelty pens that look like hypodermic needles that are selling right now at multiple retailers during the Halloween holiday. [More]
Amazon Agrees To Include Closed Captions On All Streaming Videos
By 10.15.15
Hard of hearing Amazon Prime subscribers already know that all the videos on that subscription service include closed captions, but not every video offered online by Amazon comes with captions. That is going to change after the e-tailer reached a deal with the National Association of the Deaf to expand its captioning efforts to encompass the site’s full catalog. [More]
Woman Shopping At Target With Her Kids Shocked To Hear Porn Playing Over Store PA System
By 10.15.15
When you hear heavy breathing and moaning over the PA system at the store, either an employee is really excited to announce there’s a sale on dishwasher detergent or someone is playing porn for everyone to hear. One woman experienced the latter in a California Target on Wednesday, capturing the unmistakable sounds of professional coitus airing loud and clear over the store’s intercom. [More]
Amazon Gets Out Of The Hotel Booking Business After Only 6 Months
By 10.14.15
Amazon Destinations, we barely knew you. The dedicated hotel booking site from the e-commerce giant closed its doors this week, just six months after opening them. [More]
Police: Walmart Shopper Doused Halloween Costumes With Lighter Fluid, Set Them On Fire
By 10.14.15
There always has to be someone – or something – that tries to ruin everyone’s favorite spooky holiday: the thief who wiped out a preschoolers’ pumpkin patch, the wild boars that threatened to put a damper on trick-or-treating, and now a California man who allegedly set an aisle of Halloween costumes on fire at Walmart. [More]
Target To Be First Major Credit Card Issuer To Require PINs For Chip-Enabled Cards
By 10.14.15
While many banks and other financial institutions issuing credit cards have shifted from magnetic-strip cards to the more secure EMV smart cards, most of those companies have opted to let their customers continue signing for purchases rather than memorizing a PIN. That apparently isn’t the case for Target, which is poised to become the first major credit card issuer to convert to cards that require a PIN. [More]
Kmart Employee Saved Monthly Elevator Music Tapes From Trash To Torture Us All 26 Years Later
By 10.13.15 — Updated: 6.8.17
It’s October 1989. Your family is spending a pleasant Saturday afternoon at Kmart, browsing for some late back-to-school clothes, or maybe some Halloween costumes. The shelves are full of clearance lunch boxes and plastic pumpkins, and you hear soft instrumental adult-contemporary music interspersed with Kmart promos over the store speakers. That music’s all piped in, though, isn’t it? No recordings of it could possibly exist. [More]
GameStop Proudly Announces It Will Not Sell You Video Games On Thanksgiving
By 10.12.15
If you wanted to get away from your family this Thanksgiving and buy video games and/or video game accessories, you’ll have to do it somewhere other than GameStop. The chain announced today that it will not be open on Nov. 26. [More]
