If your next trip to the bank involved going to the drive-thru, you might find no one there to greet you. That could certainly be the case if you put your financial needs in the hands of Bank of America, which has plans to close some of its drive-thru windows this year. [More]
Retail Services
Bank Of America Closing Some Drive-Up Windows In Response To Changing Consumer Banking Habits
By 1.9.15
GameStop: Industry Needs Market For Used Downloads If It Wants To Keep Charging $60
By 1.8.15
While GameStop brazenly believes it can weather competition in the used game business from bigger retail competition like Walmart, the company faces a more deadly foe in a future marketplace where most games are downloaded. Currently, there are no industry-supported methods for reselling digital games, but GameStop says it will have to happen — not just for its bottom line, but so that game publishers can continue charging top dollar. [More]
Forgot To Return A Purchase? Maybe Your Credit Card Issuer Can Help
By 1.7.15
While racking up unsecured debt is generally a bad thing, there can be hidden advantages to using your credit card for everyday purchases. Two benefits that we often recommend as weapons for consumer justice are chargebacks and warranty extensions, but here’s another one that you may not be aware of: return period extensions. Yes, buying with some credit cards can give you longer to return an unwanted item to the retailer. [More]
N.C. Homeowners Wonder How Banks Could Disappear Charlotte’s NASCAR Debt While Taking Their Houses
By 1.7.15
The magical disappearance of debt sounds like a wonderful thing, doesn’t it? Unless of course, someone else is getting their debt canceled while you’re still stuck in the mud. When homeowners in foreclosure in Charlotte, N.C. heard that the city wouldn’t have to pay back millions of debt it owed Bank of America and Wells Fargo for a underperforming NASCAR Hall of Fame, they couldn’t help but ask why they’re still facing the loss of their homes. [More]
Movie Studios: Downloads Are Up, DVD Sales Are Down
By 1.6.15
An entertainment industry group says that Americans are spending slightly less on watching moving pictures in our living rooms overall, but part of that is a change in how we buy and consume media, and not necessarily that we’re watching fewer movies and TV programs. In news that will surprise no one, spending on DVDs and DVD rentals has declined significantly, and spending on downloads, streaming service subscriptions, and digital rentals has increased. [More]
Sears To Close Parts Distribution Center In Dallas, Lay Off 77
By 1.6.15
The new year has barely started, but it’s already time to shed a few more tears for Sears. The American retailing legend is trying to stage a comeback as a place where Americans are willing to shop again. Part of that comeback is shedding stores and facilities that it no longer needs. It’s time to add facility to that list: a parts distribution center in Dallas that employs 77 people. [More]
Bottom Dollar Food To Close Stores, Sell Chain To Aldi
By 1.5.15
A fantastic, descriptive name wasn’t enough to save Bottom Dollar Food, a discount grocery chain with stores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The company announced that it will close all of its stores on January 15th. However, fans of discount food may not need to despair: there’s a deal in progress to sell all of the locations and store leases to a competing discount grocery chain, Aldi. [More]
Free Shipping Is Expensive For Retailers, Bad For Profits
By 1.2.15
Customers love free shipping, but retailers do not. Well, that’s not quite true: retailers love the sales that the availability of free shipping drives, but it isn’t very good for their profit margins. While customers have become used to free shipping and view it as the default for shopping online, retailers still haven’t been able to figure out how to provide free shipping without losing a lot of money. [More]
Clothing Company Sues Sears Claiming It Routinely Canceled Orders, Then Refused To Pay
By 1.2.15
When you’re a company that’s struggling not to lose customers and you’ve been trying to build yourself up to some semblance of your formal glory, everything matters and any negative news isn’t going to help. Sound the pity horn if you have one, because there’s yet more bad news for Sears: One of its suppliers is suing the company, saying Sears would “routinely and deliberately” cancel already placed orders and then refuse to accept delivery or pay up. [More]
Tiny Walmarts Take Bodega Form, Invade Mexico
By 12.31.14
For several years now, we’ve followed the proliferation of tinier and tinier Walmarts across the American retailscape. From the supermarket-sized Walmart Hometown stores to the gas station and convenience store called Walmart To Go, the retailer has experimented with store formats that are not enormous. Now the Tiny Walmart Menace has spread to Mexico, where its mini-grocery chain called Bodega Aurrera Express hopes to use low prices to draw customers. [More]
Play-Doh Will Replace Phallic Toy Frosting Extruders On Request
By 12.31.14
Does your child have one of the Play-Doh Cake Mountain playsets, and you want the weirdly phallic frosting extruder gone because you can’t stop laughing every time your kid picks it up? Good news for you: Hasbro has offered to exchange the syringe for the more boring yellow version on request in case the part offends or amuses you too much. [More]
2014: By The Numbers
By 12.31.14
2014 was a record-setting year in an enormous variety of ways, both good and bad. As we wrap up and head into 2015, here’s a look at what happened, and what we learned, in the 2014 that was. [More]
Freaks And Misfits: Dispatches From Santa’s Amazon Warehouse
By 12.30.14
Santa is not real, and neither are his elves. If you’re old enough to be on the Internet unsupervised, you probably already knew that. However, there are real-life people who fill in for the toy-manufacturing elves, the North Pole, and the flying reindeer. One part of that supply chain is at the Amazon warehouses where our stuff resides. Working there is not fun or easy. [More]
Is In-Store Pickup Any Faster Than Just Shopping At The Store?
By 12.30.14
For years, an increasing number of retailers have been pushing their “buy online, pickup in store” (BOPIS, for all you acronym lovers) option as a expedient option that offers the convenience of online shopping without the hassle of having to search the aisles. But is it really any faster than traditional bricks-and-mortar shopping? [More]
Amazon Claims Customers Have Saved $2 Billion In Imaginary Shipping Fees
By 12.30.14
Amazon wants the world to know that they’ve been working their robot shipping army hard this holiday season to deliver our purchases. This week, Amazon announced that they have saved their customers $2 billion in shipping fees through their Prime two-day shipping program and free shipping for orders over $35. That’s a nice caclulation and all, but it’s still largely imaginary savings. [More]
Couple Gets Married In Costco Frozen Food Section
By 12.30.14
While a Costco club membership has to be renewed every year, a couple of Costco fans in California decided to use the warehouse store as the backdrop for a ceremony involving a much longer commitment. [More]
Mall ‘Disturbance’ Was Someone Banging On A Pot, Not Gunshots
By 12.29.14
On Saturday night, there was a massive kerfuffle at a very crowded mall near Chicago. Police have pieced together that early in the evening, two people began fighting, were separated, and then began fighting again. From somewhere in the mall came three loud bangs, which people in the crowd assumed were gunshots. They were not: the noise has been variously described as someone dropping a lid or banging on a pot in the food court. [More]
Sears Offers 30% Discount On Replacement For Defective Dishwasher, Then Forgets
By 12.29.14
A man in New Jersey had the wacky idea that buying a dishwasher meant that he would end up with a working dishwasher. Instead, he ended up with one that he says broke in the same way four times in four years. Sears offered him a 30% refund on a replacement appliance, if he purchased from Sears. Naturally, Sears forgot about this offer once he actually brought the dishwasher. [More]
