“Instant?” typed user Jake when he sent us a picture of the kiosk screen after he sent some photos to the printer at Walmart. His “instant” photos were promised six and a half hours in the future. Why, that’s not very instant at all. [More]
Retail Services
At Walmart, “Clearance” Means Trying To Finally Sell Chips With A Year-Old “Best Before” Date
By 5.14.13
Consumerist reader Brendan is familiar with our Raiders of the Lost Walmart findings, and he thinks those are great, really — “for general merchandise.” But it’s another story when it comes to finding food items for sale at Walmart that would appear to be way past their prime. [More]
Bank Of America Gives Existing Customers Yet Another Reason To Flee
By 5.14.13
Many banks offer benefits to account-holders who also have their home loan serviced by the institution. Bank of America has been doing that for years, cutting fees for people with both checking accounts and mortgages. But now BofA has gone and sold off millions of these mortgages to another servicer, starting a countdown clock for account-holders to go elsewhere or likely face new fees. [More]
Kmart Gives Me BP Coupon For 30 Cents Off Gas. Excluded Items: Fuel
By 5.13.13
When Scott checked out at Kmart, a pretty sweet coupon printed out. What was it for? Thirty cents off per gallon (limit 20 gallons) at his local BP gas station! That’s actually a pretty good deal, and a nice Kmart/BP cross-promotion. Then he noticed the exclusions. Good coupons almost always have a lot of exclusions, so it’s smart to check them before heading for the newest BP. Scott didn’t expect the coupon to just cancel itself out, though. [More]
Amazon Maintains Equilibrium, Sends Out Comically Under-Packaged Boxes Too
By 5.10.13
We are glad to see that, in an effort to keep things consistent across their global retail operation, Amazon is also comically under-packaging some boxes. Reader EG’s box of light bulbs bumped their way to his house, and he is not pleased. [More]
Sears Heard That Rent-To-Own Is Ridiculously Profitable, Decides To Try It Out
By 5.10.13
The rent-to-own business is an extremely profitable one: who wouldn’t want to collect more than three times the list price of, say, a computer? So it’s interesting but not surprising that troubled retailer Sears is now entering the lease-to-own market in a partnership with the existing rent-to-own company WhyNotLeaseIt. [More]
California Sues JPMorgan Over How It Collected Credit Card Debt
By 5.10.13
If the big banks thought they were out of the clear, well, they thought wrong. This time it’s California going after JPMorgan, suing the company over claims that it used aggressive and illegal tactics to collect credit card debt from thousands of consumers. [More]
Report: Amazon Working On 3-D Smartphone
By 5.9.13
Amazon has done pretty well with its Kindle line of e-readers and tablets, but it looks like the company is determined to expand beyond the market of “things to read and watch stuff on.” A new report says the e-tailer is working on a pair of devices different from any hardware it has released before. [More]
Without An Address, FedEx Still Tracks Me Down In Tokyo
By 5.9.13 — Updated: 1.9.14
Jeff is an American who currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is a dense and baffling city, and his bank, USAA, created a huge problem when they sent him a check using FedEx but sort of forgot to include his street address. In a city of millions and in a neighborhood of 300,000, FedEx’s challenge was to find one foreign dude. They could have just sent the envelope back to USAA. Instead, they accepted the challenge and got the package to Jeff before the original delivery estimate was up. [More]
Hope You Didn’t Want Any Of Those Mother’s Day Deals Sears Offered, Then Took Away
By 5.9.13
Easy come, easy go is especially easy in the times we live in where an email can be sent with a click and just as easily, hastily retracted. Sears apparently sent out a bunch of emails to its Shop Your Way rewards members with an “extra special” VIP Mother’s Day set of deals, and shortly after, sent another saying some people weren’t ever supposed to get that email, or those deals. [More]
Amazon Packs Your Snacks Extra Safely In A Box Ten Times Too Big
By 5.9.13
Alex says that when a giant box from Amazon arrived on his doorstep, he was puzzled. There was a huge, huge box, but all he had ordered were some Munchies brand peanuts that were on sale. (Having Prime makes you do that kind of thing.) That couldn’t possibly be all that was in the box: there was enough space in there for hundreds of packets of peanuts. He had only ordered 32. So what was in the box? [More]
What Is The Gray Market, And Why Should I Care?
By 5.9.13 — Updated: 5.10.17
Back in February, we posted the story of a reader who got a great deal from an online discount vendor on a Samsung MP3 player, but learned that there was a reason why the deal was so fab. It had been manufactured for the Chinese market, not the United States market, and made its way to her pocket through gray market channels. That meant that it didn’t have a warranty through Samsung USA: if she wanted to fix it, she had to send it for repair in Hong Kong. Okay, but what’s the “gray market?” [More]
Man Uses Giant Pet Food Bags To Steal Laptops From Walmart
May 8, 2013
If you put a laptop computer in your Walmart cart, then put a giant bag of cat food on top of it, it’s possible that no one will notice the computer. However, if you walk out of the store without paying for either item, you’d think someone might notice. Police say that one Florida man walked out with four laptops and a lot of cat food on four separate trips before he was caught. [WTSP] [More]
Hey Best Buy, If You Want Us To Shop There, Try Selling People Stuff
By 5.7.13
Michael is buying his mother a new computer for Mother’s Day, because he’s a good son and she’s moving away soon. As long as he was buying a computer, he wanted to get some reward points from Best Buy on his credit card. Only he couldn’t. While the product page bragged of “free shipping,” Best Buy was not willing to ship the item. At all. [More]
Senate Signs Off On Marketplace Fairness Act; Online Sales Tax Inches Closer To Reality
By 5.6.13 — Updated: 5.7.13
If you’re one of the many Amazon customers whose state has yet to reach an agreement about the collection of online sales tax, this will probably be bad news. This afternoon, the Senate voted in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would give each state the authority to compel online businesses to collect applicable taxes. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart: Old Crap Isn’t As Useless As it Seems
By 5.6.13 — Updated: 8.15.13
Sometimes, the items that the Raiders of the Lost Walmart dig up aren’t quite as useless as they seem. They’re still pretty terrible, and the odds are very poor that a person who uses the obsolete video or gaming system required is going to walk in the door. But they’re not quite as useless or obsolete as many of the items we feature in this series. [More]
New York AG To Sue Bank Of America, Wells Fargo Over Alleged Violations Of National Mortgage Settlement
By 5.6.13
If the big mortgage servicers thought they’d put a pile of legal troubles behind them when they reached the $25 billion dollar National Mortgage Settlement with almost every state in 2012, they were wrong. Today, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced his intention to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for what he alleges is a ” persistent pattern of non-compliance” by the two banks. [More]
Amazon Notices Our Streaming Video Was Glitchy, Proactively Issues Refund
By 5.2.13
We’ve always said that one of the true measures of quality customer service is how a company reacts to complaints. So it’s always good to hear about a company that doesn’t just respond well to a complaint, but preempts that complaint by proactively issuing a refund. [More]
