Pulling off a heist sounds like a criminal rush and all, but cutting a hole in a cinder block wall to steal anywhere from $65,000 to $75,000 in electronics still sounds like a whole lot of effort. That’s how thieves boosted a bunch of merchandise from a Brooklyn Best Buy, say police investigating the incident. [More]
Retail Services
Cutting A Hole In The Wall Of A Best Buy To Steal A Bunch Of Electronics Seems Excessive, No?
By 1.2.14
Beer Thieves Drive Off With Walmart Manager In Back Of Truck
By 1.2.14
When a Florida Walmart manager followed a couple of suspected beer thieves out into the parking lot, he probably wasn’t expecting he’d end up going on a 12-mile ride in the back of their truck, tossing beer cans toward passing cars in the hopes of getting someone’s attention. [More]
Target Will Honor Gift Cards It Failed To Activate During Holiday Season
By 1.2.14
Hot on the heels of a massive data breach that compromised credit and debit card information for some 40 million U.S. customers, Target has confirmed reports that some gift cards sold during the recent holiday shopping season were not activated properly by the retailer. [More]
Consumerist Presents The 19 Worst Ads Of 2013, Brought To You By Consumerist
By 12.31.13
While we all have that one friend who is constantly littering our Facebook timelines with YouTube links to “Hilarius!” [sic] commercials, most of us hate advertisements. Even the ones that are funny or interesting the first time you see them will inevitably begin to grate after you see it for the 10th time in an hour. But some ads never even earn that initial chuckle, and instead go right to pushing that nerve that makes you want to body-slam your beloved 55″ TV. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Shopping For Games For New PlayStation 2
By 12.31.13
Sure, the PS4 is now on the market, but not everyone keeps up with the hottest and latest consoles. For those people, especially if they have no idea what year it is, Walmart offers copies of decade-old PS2 games at comically high prices. [More]
Banks Working With HELOC Borrowers To Prevent Potential Loan-Default Disaster Before It Happens
By 12.30.13
The housing bubble that imploded spectacularly in 2008, taking a big chunk of the U.S. economy with it, has a second wave waiting to strike in the form home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). Having learned from the lesson that preventing a disaster rather than recovering from one might, in fact, be a better way to go, lenders — at the urging of regulators — are now working proactively with borrowers to stave off potential doom before it happens. [More]
Is This Video Evidence That Walmart Grossly Over-Ordered For The Holidays?
By 12.30.13
We’ve talked in the past about Walmart’s staffing and inventory issues, where some stores have empty shelves but full back rooms because there just aren’t enough employees around to deal with all the shelving. But a new video from an investment advisor firm claims to demonstrate that the nation’s largest retailer has so much leftover inventory from this holiday shopping season that it’s overflowing into the store. [More]
Wells Fargo To Pay Fannie Mae $541 Million Over Toxic Loans
By 12.30.13
All those mortgages that weren’t worth the cocktail napkins they were written on are continuing to sting big banks, with Wells Fargo announcing this morning that it had reached a $591 million deal with Fannie Mae to resolve the mortgage-backer’s claims that Wells sold it a pile of loans that the bank knew were toxic. [More]
Target Confirms PIN Data Also Stolen In Credit/Debit Card Hack
By 12.27.13
After days of denying a report that hackers had stolen encrypted PIN data from some 40 million Target shoppers, the retailer has finally admitted that yes, this information was indeed collected during the 3-week-long data breach. [More]
Another Christmas, Another Porn-Filled Nintendo DS Under The Tree
By 12.27.13
When you buy what is supposed to be a brand-new piece of electronics from the world’s largest retailer, it really shouldn’t come loaded with someone else’s content. And when the supposedly new device is a gift for your 8-year-old son, it certainly shouldn’t come pre-loaded with other people’s porn. [More]
Christmas Gift Of iPod Was Actually A Box Filled With Erasers
By 12.27.13
One San Diego man obviously isn’t a regular Consumerist reader. He bought his wife an iPod for Christmas, and she opened it up to find…four erasers and some specially-cut index cards filling up the spot that’s supposed to cradle the iPod. They’re probably very nice erasers, but you can’t play music on them. Light percussion, maybe. [More]
During Shipping Frenzy, Amazon Limited Prime Memberships
By 12.26.13
Now that the Christmas shopping and shipping frenzy is over, Amazon is providing free extensions of their Prime no-limit free shipping service to shoppers whose packages didn’t arrive. Before the holiday, though, Amazon was actually limiting signups for Prime during peak periods. Maybe they didn’t want to clog up the shipping works with boxes containing single packs of cookies and other small impulse items. [More]
Complain About Late Deliveries To Get Free Amazon Prime
By 12.26.13
Amazon Prime customers may feel frustrated that they pay the $79/year fee only to find that their packages are still subject to the same delays as everyone else. But Prime members who carefully monitor their purchases can score free extensions on the service if a package is not delivered on time. And even if you’re not a Prime member, you can still get a discount if a guaranteed delivery date is not met. [More]
That’s Not Santa At The Door On Christmas Day: It’s FedEx
By 12.26.13
There were probably a lot of printed-out photos standing in for gifts under Christmas trees across the country. A combination of huge last-minute demand, retailers’ promises of Christmas delivery, and bad weather meant that many gifts that were supposed to arrive on the last business day before Christmas didn’t. Lots of people were disappointed. Joseph was one of them. Then…there was a modern miracle. [More]
CVS Has Everything For The Busy Time-Traveling Mother In Your Life
By 12.23.13
I vaguely remember that day planners are what people once used to organize their lives before they used smartphones for that kind of thing. Apparently, no one in Jim’s town has had any need for one since 2009, so no one has noticed that they still have planners in stock from 2009. [More]
Wells Fargo Employees Say Threat Of Being Fired Leads To Bad Behavior
By 12.23.13
A few months back, we told you about the 30 Los Angeles-area Wells Fargo employees who became former Wells Fargo employees when it was discovered they were opening bogus accounts to meet the bank’s demanding sales goals. According to a new investigative report on the megabank, Wells workers around the country are feeling pressured into behaving unethically just to avoid being fired. [More]
Groupon Waits Until Now To Admit It’s Not Shipping Nexus 7 Purchased On Black Friday
By 12.23.13
Hey, remember that debacle in 2011 when Best Buy waited until a few days before Christmas to cancel many orders placed during the Black Friday frenzy? Groupon doesn’t. They offered a great deal on a Nexus 7 tablet through their Groupon Goods site on Black Friday, and kept promising that it would be on customers’ doorsteps by Christmas. Then they canceled the orders. [More]
How Employers Use Charity To Make Barely-Legal Political Contributions
By 12.23.13
Though corporations can create and sponsor a political action committee, they aren’t allowed to donate directly to PACs using funds from their general treasuries; that’s straight-up against the law. Nor are companies allowed to pay or reimburse employees for donating to particular PACs. But there is a loophole in the law that allows large companies like Boeing, Coca-Cola, and Walmart to encourage workers to donate to particular political groups, and that loophole is all about charitable matching. [More]
