It’s the end of the day, so let’s all gather around the soft glow of our monitors and tell spooky stories. I’ll start. Not that long ago, an ordinary consumer had a terrifying experience. He laid his Bank of America account to rest last August, never imagining that it would rise from the dead to eat his brains wallet. [More]
Retail Services
Safe Deposit Key Refund Zombifies Bank Of America Account
By 10.31.13
Costco Sends Us Bale Of Cardboard, Includes Free Furniture Pieces
By 10.31.13
Amy was familiar with the work of the Stupid Shipping Gang, but didn’t expect to see them in her own office. No, not in the shipping department: at Costco, the vendor that sent them some soundproof panels for the office. [More]
Sears Even More Doomed Than Usual, Considers Spinning Off Auto Centers And Lands’ End
By 10.30.13
As anyone who has read Consumerist or casually browsed any business section knows, Sears is not doing well. Our ongoing joke for years has been that Sears is a vast anti-capitalist prank, since no business that’s actually out to make money could stay so institutionally awful for so long. Today, the company announced that two of its most viable divisions may get kicked out of the nest: Lands’ End and its auto centers. [More]
Walmart Sends Me Extra Clothes, Says To Keep Or Donate Them
By 10.30.13
Inevitably, in commerce through the mail, shipments get mixed up, customers receive the wrong thing or nothing at all, and customers receive multiples of what they ordered. What impressed Brent was that sure, Walmart says that they “may have” shipped the jersey that he ordered “multiple times.” They not only didn’t ask him to return the items, but encouraged him to donate them. Isn’t that wonderful? [More]
95-Year-Old Target Worker Retires After Working For The Company Since 1968
By 10.29.13
There’s dedication to your job, and then there’s spending 45 years working for the same company when many people would’ve spent that time enjoying the retirement years. A 95-year-old woman who started working as a cashier at a Target in Minnesota has finally retired on the exact same calendar date that she first began her employment, October 28. [More]
Amazon Offering Discount E-Books On Previously Purchased Books (But The Selection Is Wanting)
By 10.29.13
Back in September, Amazon gave a vague launch window for its new MatchBook program, which allows customers who bought printed books from the e-tailer over the years to now have the option of buying an e-book version of those titles at a discount. Today, MatchBook finally launched, though only with around 75,000 titles included. [More]
Maybe Calling Itself A “Showroom” Isn’t The Best Holiday Marketing Plan For Best Buy
By 10.29.13
A showroom is a place where you go to look at stuff and think about buying it, but it may not necessarily be in stock or even available. In the e-commerce era, it has a slightly different meaning: the term “showrooming” means visiting a nearby store to check out an item in person, then buying that item online from a different company. [More]
Walmart Throws Out $19,000 In Meat After Man Pokes Syringe Into Sausages
By 10.28.13
It’s a classic saying: One bad apple spoils the entire barrel, and a few syringe-poked packages of breakfast sausage causes Walmart to toss out the entire section of the meat department. [More]
Walmart Will No Longer Give You Its Goodies In A Box Every Month
By 10.25.13
Almost a year after Walmart launched its Goodies subscription snack program, the company is telling customers by email that it’ll be shutting the service down after this month’s delivery. [More]
Walmart Worker Fired For Stopping Assault On Customer Won’t Go Back To Old Job
By 10.25.13
You may remember last week’s story of the Walmart employee in Michigan who was fired after he intervened to stop an assault against a customer in the parking lot. The retailer subsequently decided to offer him the chance to return to work, but he’s not biting. [More]
Bank Of America Found Liable For Countrywide’s “Hustle” Scam
By 10.23.13 — Updated: 7.31.14
A federal jury has found Bank of America (and a current JPMorgan executive) liable for a Countrywide Financial program that knowingly sold piles of cruddy home loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, meaning the bank could face nearly $850 million more in penalties added to the $40 billion-plus court tab it has tallied since acquiring the cratering mortgage-lender in 2008. [More]
This 1976 Commercial Shows How People Never Used To Feel About Kmart
By 10.23.13
In the company’s early history about a hundred years ago, a now-familiar brand was called Kresge. That doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily, so in the ’60s they changed their name to Kmart. You know, that store where other kids in school made fun of you for buying your clothes there. It’s still around, of course, but people just aren’t as enthusiastic about it as they apparently were in this 1976 commercial. [More]
18 Cats That Can’t Resist Lounging In Amazon Boxes
By 10.23.13 — Updated: 1.26.15
As everyone who has owned a cat or seen the Internet knows, cats love boxes. America’s cats aren’t quite sure what to make of the news that Amazon has increased the free Super Saver Shipping threshold to $35, from the original $25. On the one paw, this might mean that their households will be getting fewer packages from Amazon and fewer boxes to lounge in. Or could it drive more cat owners to get Amazon Prime and thus have more boxes to lounge in? [More]
Craving A New iPad? Walmart Adds Tablets To Trade-In Program
By 10.23.13
Less than two months after announcing a smartphone trade-in program, Walmart is taking yesterday’s announcement of the new iPad Air and upgraded iPad Mini as a good reason to add tablets to the offer. [More]
Are These Easter Ice Creams At Walmart Very Late Or Very Early?
By 10.22.13 — Updated: 4.2.14
Update: Mystery solved. At this point in the year, we can’t be sure whether an Easter item still on store shelves is early for Easter or just lingering months after the holiday. That’s the mystery of the Mounds Eggs that Micah found on the shelves of a Walmart in Georgia. [More]
Party City Saves Money On Models, Just Makes Photos For Plus-Size Items Wider
By 10.22.13
If you’re a costume store and have both misses’ and plus-sized tights and leggings to sell, there are two things you could do. You could hire models who fit into each respective product line, and take photos of their legs in each item. Or you could take pictures of a misses’ size model wearing the tights, then stretch out the images to create the illusion of a plus-size model. Party City did one of these. [More]
BOfA Stops Overdraft-Friendly Practice Of Re-Ordering Transactions From High To Low
By 10.22.13
As we’ve noted multiple times over the years, some banks love to lump all transactions made by a customer during a day or weekend together and then process them not in the order they were received, but from largest to smallest. For customers on the brink of overdrafting, this can result in numerous fees that may have been avoided if the charges had been processed chronologically. In a rare bit of positive Bank of America news, the bank has decided to stop this high-to-low transaction processing (for many debit purchases). [More]
Walmart Hunter Gets Probation For Shooting Deer In Parking Lot
By 10.22.13
Because it is very not legal to go hunting for deer (or any animal, really) in the crowded parking lot of a Walmart, the man who shot one last March has had his hat handed to him by way of probation. The Indiana man avoided trial on charges of reckless endangerment, killing or taking big game unlawfully, failing to have a hunting license, discharging a weapon across a highway, discharging a weapon in a safety zone and using a motor vehicle to hunt illegally. [Tribune-Live] [More]
