There’s no such thing as too big to jail. We’ve heard the saying a number of times since the 2008 financial crisis, but now Attorney General Eric Holder is attempting to put a stop to assumptions that financial institutions and their executives are too large to be indicted. [More]
Retail Services
FBI Warns Stores To Prepare For More Credit Card Hacks
By 1.24.14
The recent malware attacks on payment systems at Target and Neiman Marcus may be getting all the headlines, but they weren’t the first such breaches, and they won’t be the last. This week, the FBI issued a warning to retailers, telling them to prepare for the inevitable hack attempts to come. [More]
Is Target Shaving Workers’ Hours So It Doesn’t Have To Insure Them?
By 1.23.14
Earlier this week, Target announced that it would no longer offer health insurance to part-time employees (those who work fewer than 32 hours per week), while at the same time claiming that it would not be trimming employees’ schedules so that they no longer qualify as full-time workers. However, some Target employees tell Consumerist that company execs aren’t telling the truth. [More]
Robber Calls Ahead So Gamestop Workers Can Set Aside The Xbox One He’d Like To Steal
By 1.22.14
Let’s get this straight: In no way is robbing a store ever something we would praise. But it does take a certain amount of chutzpah to actually call the location you’re intending to rob and ask employees to set aside the items you’d like to steal later. So in the box labeled “critical thinking skills,” one bad consumer in Nashville would at least get a check mark for thinking something like this might work. Because it did. [More]
Sears Closing Flagship Chicago Store
By 1.22.14
Along with McDonald’s, Sears is one of the biggest national brands most associated with the city of Chicago. Many people still refer to the soaring Willis Tower as the Sears Tower, even though the company fled the building for the suburbs nearly 20 years ago and gave up the naming rights in 2009. Now the once-great retailer is set to distance itself further from the Loop with news that it will shutter a flagship store in the city it once called home. [More]
Target Dropping Health Insurance For Part-Time Employees
By 1.22.14
Saying that part-time employees can now get health care coverage through recently launched online insurance exchanges, Target announced yesterday that, as of April 1, it will no longer offer insurance to its part-time staffers. [More]
Amazon In Talks To Create Online Cable Competitor, But Don’t Hold Your Breath
By 1.21.14
Amazon is already a major player in the streaming video rental and subscription business, competing against iTunes, Zune, Google Play, Redbox, and Netflix. But does the e-tail giant have its eyes on more-established competitors? A new report claims that Amazon is looking to create its own live pay TV service that would pit the company against cable operators. [More]
Is Voice-Recognition The Future Of Banking? Wells Fargo Thinks So
By 1.21.14
Who needs to go to the bank when you have a smartphone. Unless you really want to talk to a living, breathing person, you might not have to trek to the bank in the future. That’s because some banks are looking to add voice-recognition technology to their mobile banking repertoire. [More]
If Walmart Won’t Accept Returns Without A Receipt, Pointing A BB Gun Is Not The Answer
By 1.21.14
On the one hand, it might’ve been a relief to a Walmart worker in Baltimore to find out that the weapon pointed at her recently at his workplace wasn’t in fact, a machine gun. But on the other hand, it’s still not a pleasing prospect to face an angry customer with a CO2-powered BB gun. [More]
This Cat Needs A New Home After Living In A Home Depot For 13 Years
By 1.21.14
The world was Depot’s oyster, and that world is the Home Depot. See, Depot is a cat and her home is Home Depot (try saying that three times fast). She’s lived in a South Carolina store for 13 years, but that life of trolling for pests, snuggling up with paint cans and greeting workers in the morning is about to end. She’s getting the boot after triggering the store’s security alarms one time too many. [More]
Two Men Arrested For Using Credit Card Numbers Stolen From Target
By 1.21.14
While most ID thieves are wisely staying away from the more than 100 million credit and debit card numbers compromised by the recent data breach of Target’s in-store payment processing system, two Mexican citizens apparently thought they could get away with using some of these leaked numbers to make illegal purchases. [More]
Amazon Patents Method For Shipping You Things Before You Order Them
By 1.21.14
Regular Amazon shoppers are probably quite familiar with the e-tailer’s e-mail blasts that highlight things you might want based on previous purchases and the things you’ve searched for on the site. But what if Amazon went one step further and actually predicted the things you will buy and shipped them in advance? [More]
OfficeMax Addresses Junk Mail To Dad Of ‘Daughter Killed In Car Crash’
By 1.20.14
No one likes junk mail. It’s annoying, we agree. We never imagined one simple piece of mail could cause a family pain and trauma, but it did last week. An Illinois man received what at first appeared to be an ordinary mailing from OfficeMax, except under his name was the line “daughter killed in car crash”. [More]
And Then There Was One: Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank Discontinue Payday Loan Products
By 1.17.14
The small victories are adding up in the battle against predatory loans this week. Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank announced they will discontinue high-risk payday lending programs. [More]
Man Suspected Of Swapping iPods For Erasers At Target Caught, Arrested, Pleads Not Guilty
By 1.17.14
Remember the guy in California who gave his wife an iPod box filled with erasers for Christmas, but not intentionally? When he tried to exchange it for a box with a real iPod in it, the new box contained erasers, too. We publish a lot of stories like this, but here’s something unusual: a follow-up story with the arrest of the person behind the alleged eraser-swap. [More]
Non-Target Customers Wondering How Target Got Contact Info To Send Email About Hack
By 1.17.14
Did you get an email from Target apologizing for the recent hack and offering free credit monitoring yesterday that felt kind of, well, iffy? Many of our readers and others elsewhere on the Internet have pointed to the mass email as sketchy, due in part to pall cast by the retailer’s security breach over the holidays. And then there’s the fact that many people never shop at Target. Not in stores, and not online. Not ever. So how did they get those email addresses? [More]
Good News For Fans Of Deconstructed Strained Peas: Babies Still Allowed Inside Alinea
By 1.17.14
The recent fuss over the question of whether babies should be allowed inside Chicago restaurant Alinea struck a nerve online; some people were sympathetic, others baffled as to why someone would bring an 8-month-old along for a four-hour tasting menu. It turns out, though, that many readers and even media outlets made assumptions about the incident that aren’t true. [More]
Target Zaps Itself With Shrink Ray To Create Teensy TargetExpress
By 1.17.14
A decade ago, the trend in big retail stores like Target was to get larger and larger, with mega-sized SuperTargets popping up around the country. Then the country’s over-mortgaged house of cards collapsed and smaller was all the rage, resulting in CityTarget stores in 2012. But that’s apparently not small enough, with the retailer set to go even smaller with new TargetExpress stores. [More]
