Between settlements, fines, legal fees, and loan reductions, Bank of America’s tab for its part in the mortgage meltdown is well over $50 billion, including last week’s record-setting $16.65 billion deal. And yet BofA is still trying to fight a nearly year-old jury verdict involving a scam by Countrywide Financial that sold off oodles of worthless home loans before the housing bubble collapsed. [More]
Retail Services
Amazon Wants College Students To Join Prime, Offers Cash And Scholarships
By 8.28.14
Students who are heading to college can find scholarships from a wide variety of sources, but did you ever expect to see one from Amazon? The Amazon Student scholarship uses all of the usual criteria to select its winners: GPA, extracurricular activities, and test scores. It’s also only open to members of Amazon Student, the version of Amazon Prime meant to hook college students. [More]
Atlanta Walmart Receives Early Morning Delivery When Woman Gives Birth In The Store
By 8.28.14
So far this year we’ve reported on two women who gave birth in the parking lots of separate Walmart stores. This week, a woman finally made it inside the store before welcoming her bundle of joy. [More]
JPMorgan Chase, At Least Four Other Banks Hit By Hackers In Coordinated Attacks
By 8.28.14
No one is too big to get hacked — and that includes JPMorgan Chase and at least four other banks that were hit by hackers earlier this month. The FBI is investigating the blitzes, which seem to be sophisticated, coordinated cyberattacks that grabbed gigagbytes of data. [More]
Reminder: If A Store Won’t Sell You A Laptop For $10, It’s Not Bait And Switch
By 8.27.14
It’s not the fastest or best computer you’ll see, but the laptop that reader J. spotted for sale at her college’s online bookstore was a deal she couldn’t pass up. An AMD E300 processor! 2 gigabytes of RAM! A 320 gigabyte hard drive! All this for only $10. She placed an order and waited…only to have her order rudely canceled with no notice. [More]
Amazon (Not Google!) Acquires Video Game Streaming Company Twitch For $970 Million
By 8.25.14
Rumors of video game live-streaming service Twitch.tv being acquired by Google for $1 billion have been slightly exaggerated. It turns out the price of the biggest gaming live-streaming site on the internet is only $970 million, about $30 million shy of that billion-with-a-B mark. But the rumor was wrong in one huge way: it’s Amazon, not Google, spending the scratch on a streaming future. [More]
Walmart Doesn’t Advertise Their Roll-Forward Pricing
By 8.25.14
Walmart is famous for lowering prices and calling them “rollbacks,” but sometimes the opposite happens, too. Reader Ben spotted this example of roll-forward pricing at his local Walmart on a clearance sign. [More]
Sears Continues Retail Death Spiral, Still Sells A Few Useful Things
By 8.21.14
For the ninth quarter in a row, Sears Holdings Corporation has lost money. Even as the company closes stores, rents out remaining stores, and tries desperate moves like opening early on Thanksgiving Day and making fun of itself in its own ads, the company continues to sell itself for parts in a sad retail death spiral. Yet is there anything that you should consider buying at Sears while it still exists? Are Americans who sneer at Sears missing out? Maybe. [More]
DOJ Finally Confirms Record-Setting $16.65B Settlement With Bank Of America
By 8.21.14
More than two weeks after it was first reported that the Justice Dept. and Bank of America were coming to terms on a record-setting deal worth nearly $17 billion, the two parties have finally confirmed the details of a settlement that will resolve multiple federal and state claims involving the bank’s bad behavior in the lead-up to the collapse of the housing market. [More]
Woman Says Anthropologie Manager Sent Her To Breastfeed On The Toilet
By 8.21.14
A woman in California says that Anthropologie used to be her favorite store, but she gave serious thought to boycotting the chain after a store manager asked her to please feed her six-week-old son in the bathroom, not in the back of the store. The goal? To make everyone more “comfortable.” [More]
Send Us Your Questions In Bulk For Costco CEO Craig Jelinek
By 8.20.14
For three decades, Costco has been selling pallets of toilet paper, jugs of ketchup, sacks of flour, and steaks in family packs big enough to feed a reality show family. But what do you actually know about what goes on behind the scenes at the members’ only warehouse chain? Now is your chance to ask the company’s CEO Craig Jelinek. [More]
Caramel Apple Oreos Arrive In Target Stores Today
By 8.20.14
Is caramel apple the new pumpkin spice? It could be: when Americans reach the level of pumpkin spice fatigue, they’ll be looking for new, non-orange but still fall-themed snacks. Starting today, you can pick up Caramel Apple flavored Oreos…only at Target. [More]
Let’s Guess What Happens If You Drive A Stolen Shopping Scooter To Meet Your Probation Officer
By 8.20.14
There are many things you can do to make sure you don’t go get in trouble with the law for another go around, but a surefire way to hop right into that hot water again? By boosting a ride and driving it to a meeting with a probation officer. [More]
Report: Amazon Could Test Drone Delivery In India This Year
By 8.20.14
Fine: if the Federal Aviation Administration won’t let Amazon prepare for the robot apocalypse by testing its delivery drones near the company’s Seattle headquarters, the company will take its new toys and play with them elsewhere. Namely, in India. The Times of India reports that the e-commerce giant plans to test the service near its current warehouses in Mumbai and Bangalore. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Uncover Ancient, Mysterious Flip Camera
By 8.19.14 — Updated: 5.1.17
The Raiders of the Lost Walmart are a band of brave retail explorers who comb the world’s big-box stores in search of retail antiquities at comically high prices. They carefully excavate clearance racks in order to find the most ancient pieces of technology available. In this set of field notes, Raiders report finding a fast-food promotional game, an obsolete camera from a defunct company, and a wireless adapter from a TiVo of generations past. [More]
Target Will Stay Open Slightly Later To Drum Up More Business
By 8.18.14
While big-box discount competitor Walmart is trying a bold experiment in maybe sometimes putting more cashiers out on the floor this holiday season, Target is also trying something new to make shopping more convenient for customers. Starting this month, they will be open slightly longer hours. Instead of closing at 10 Monday through Saturday and 9 on Sunday, they will extend the hours of about half their stores by an hour or two. [More]
OnTrac Still Marking Packages Delivered Ahead Of Time
By 8.18.14
Amazon is in the business of selling you everything and getting it to your doorstep quickly. What stands in their way? The regional delivery services it partners with to get Prime packages to their customers in certain regions of the country. While the tracking information claimed that Diana’s package was delivered to her house in the early afternoon, it wasn’t. However, it did arrive at the same time as the replacement that Amazon sent. [More]
Walmart Promises To Have Humans At Cash Registers This Holiday Season… Sort Of
By 8.18.14
Nothing screams “holiday spirit” more than scouring Walmart’s stripped-bare shelves for hours looking for gifts, only to get to checkout and find that only a coupl of the dozens of available cash registers are being used. That’s when some shoppers go “screw this” and pull up Amazon on their phones or just tell their kids that Christmas is cancelled because of Walmart. To keep that from happening this year, the nation’s largest retailer is promising that each of its registers will be staffed from Black Friday through late December… at least some of the time. [More]
