When a product says “Money-Back Guarantee” on the label, it’s not out of line to assume that you’ll get your money back if you don’t like it, right? That’s what one Sam’s Club customer thought when he bought some seriously subpar house-brand vodka at the liquor store at his local Sam’s Club. The problem: the store, corporate, and the distillery disagreed about who should honor that guarantee. [More]
Retail Services
Toshiba Quits U.S. TV Market, Licenses Name To Taiwan’s Compal
By 1.30.15
Toshiba will be leaving the U.S. market for televisions, but you’ll still be able to buy a Toshiba TV later this year. Confused? Like other brands in the TV market, the company will license its name to Compal Electronics. TVs made by Compal will hit shelves starting in March. [More]
Lawsuit Alleges Costco Managers, Employees Taunted Greeter With Tourette’s
By 1.30.15
A new federal lawsuit filed today claims that Costco and the managers of a Long Island store violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and New York State Human Rights laws by allegedly allowing managers and staff to taunt a fellow employee about his Tourette’s Syndrome, to the point where the man had to be hospitalized. [More]
Shoplifting Suspect Calls 9-1-1 On Walmart Security Guards Following Him Around
By 1.29.15
It must have been very unnerving for a man in Georgia when he noticed that two tough-looking men were following him around as he left Walmart. They caught up with him, claiming to be security guards from the store, and brought him back to Walmart. Police say that the suspect thought they were “thugs” and pulled a knife on the men, then called 9-1-1. [More]
CT Tax Commissioner: Walmart Tax Refund Service Just A Lure To Get You To Shop At Walmart
By 1.29.15
Walmart recently announced a service that allows consumers who use certain participating tax preparers to pick up their refunds at a Walmart store. The program already has one high-profile detractor in the form of Connecticut Commissioner of Revenue Services Kevin Sullivan who says he believes the program is intended to get consumers to spend their refunds at Walmart. [More]
Kmart To Pay $102K For Refusing To Hire Dialysis Patient Who Couldn’t Give Urine Sample
By 1.29.15
Kmart must pay $102,000 to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of a Maryland man who says the company reneged on a job offer when he couldn’t provide a urine sample for a drug test because of his kidney disease and dialysis. [More]
Amazon Adds Seller-Shipped Marketplace Items To Super Saver Shipping
By 1.28.15
People love free shipping, even if retailers don’t necessarily love it so much. For customers who don’t have Prime memberships, Amazon’s free shipping on orders of $35 or more is a popular policy. Yet if one item in a customer’s cart ships from a third-party seller, it doesn’t count toward that $35 total. Amazon has now changed this policy…but only for items that were already listed as having free shipping. [More]
Americans Will Spend $703 Million On Valentine’s Day Gifts For Pets
By 1.28.15
Do you like to celebrate holidays with your pet? The National Retail Federation asked Americans how much we plan to spend on Valentine’s Day gifts for our pets, it adds up to $703 million across the whole critter economy. [More]
Marching Band Delivers Petition To Citi Asking Banks To “Revoke License To Steal”
By 1.28.15
In a handful of recent decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the right of businesses to effectively break the law by putting a few carefully worded sentences into their contracts and user agreements. But just because you can add these clauses doesn’t mean you have to do so, which is why pro-consumer advocacy groups gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition that was delivered, with a little bit of music, to Citigroup HQ in Manhattan this morning. [More]
Best Buy Becomes First Retailer To Sell Samsung’s Gear VR Headset (Galaxy Note 4 Not Included)
By 1.28.15
The Samsung Gear VR headset has been on sale since the fall, but it’s been hiding quietly on the Samsung website, which isn’t exactly the place most of us do our shopping. But now the virtual reality headgear has popped up on the website for Best Buy. [More]
Just Because Your Kmart’s Shelves Are Empty, That Doesn’t Mean It’s Closing
By 1.28.15
As Sears Holdings, the parent company of Kmart and Sears, tries to save itself from impending doom, the company is closing a number of its weaker stores. In the current round of cuts, Kmart stores are heavily affected, but the company wants to assure residents of one California town that in spite of empty shelves, their local Kmart store is not about to close. [More]
Study Shows The Obvious: Amazon Prime Members Spend More On Amazon
By 1.27.15
It should be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of how shopping works that Amazon.com customers who have a subscription to the company’s Prime service probably spend a lot more with Amazon than people who don’t. The temptation to order all of our daily needs without reaching the magical $35 free-shipping total beckons to our inner very lazy or very efficient people. [More]
Mom Sues Target Claiming Humiliating “Walk Of Shame” Upon Firing Led To Son’s Suicide
By 1.26.15
A California Target is facing a lawsuit from the family of a former employee who says he took his own life after being forced to participate in a humiliating “walk of shame” through the store in handcuffs. [More]
Package With $4,000 Worth Of Electronics No Match For USPS Carrier’s Chucking Abilities
By 1.23.15
The other day we asked readers if they’d pay money to choose which carrier delivers their Amazon packages, and found that about 63% of you would be willing to pay some amount for that right. And it’s no wonder people want a choice, when the United States Postal Service has carriers chucking packages filled with delicate, expensive electronics inside onto porches like it’s a box filled with feathers. [More]
8 Things We Learned About The End Of Abercrombie & Fitch’s Jeffries Era
By 1.22.15
This week, Bloomberg Businessweek asks the question: can Abercrombie & Fitch be saved? Now that the retailer is losing sales, it has removed logos from its clothing, introduced the color black, and started selling some clothes above women’s size 10. (Mostly online, of course.) Is that enough to save the company, which for years was controlled by a CEO who saw himself, at age 70, as exactly like his 25-year-old ideal customers? [More]
While Target Canada Winds Down, Walmart Builds More Supercentres
By 1.22.15
A week ago, Target made the surprising announcement that it is closing its Canadian division. Meanwhile, things aren’t bad in the Canadian retail sector for all discounters from across the border: competing American invader Walmart announced that it’s opening eleven new Supercenters Supercentres in eight different provinces by the end of January 2015. [More]
Wells Fargo, Chase To Pay $35.7M For Allowing Illegal Mortgage Kickbacks
By 1.22.15
Federal law prohibits giving or receiving kickbacks in exchange for a referral of business related to a real-estate-settlement service, but for four years a now-defunct title company in Maryland provide cash, marketing materials and consumer information in exchange for referrals. And now the banks have agreed to pay more than $35 million — including $11.1 million in redress to affected consumers — for their sins. [More]
Federal Court Rules In Favor Of Costco In Gray-Market Omega Watch Case
By 1.21.15
In the past, we’ve warned readers against shopping on the gray market unless they really, really know what they’re doing. Costco has been doing some gray-market buying of its own. Now a federal court has ruled that it’s cool and good for consumers for Costco to sell gray-market watches. [More]
