UPDATE: Home Depot has confirmed that it does use credit card info to track customers. [More]
Retail Services
Deadline For Foreclosed-Upon Homeowners To File Claim In National Mortgage Settlement Is This Friday
By 1.14.13
It took years to reach the $25 billion settlement between the nation’s largest lenders and 49 states, but affected homeowners were only given months to claim their piece of the pie. [More]
Walmart Sells Fake Display Model iPad, Won’t Exchange It For Real One
By 1.14.13
A New Jersey woman took the two large Walmart gift cards that her husband had received as a holiday bonus and bought an iPad with them. Only the iPad that she she brought home from the store wasn’t the same one described on the box. The memory capacity and serial numbers didn’t match. She also couldn’t get the tablet to charge, or even to plug in to the cable. The item in her box, you see, was a plastic fake display-model iPad. [More]
Sears Dishwasher Breaks After 3 Weeks, Or Doubles As Automatic Floor Mopper
By 1.14.13
Kat didn’t say why she thought it would be a good idea to get a new dishwasher from Sears, but it didn’t seem like such a bad idea at the time, either. As an American over the age of twenty, she most likely remembers a time when the Kenmore brand name denoted quality, appliance salesmen didn’t kick you out of the store to go home and shop online, and dishwashers were supposed to last for longer than three weeks. [More]
Best Buy Needs 2 Forms Of Photo ID To Give You Five Bucks For A Broken Cell Phone
By 1.14.13
Quick: in your wallet right now, do you have two photo IDs? I do, but only if you count a BJ’s card. If you don’t, don’t visit Best Buy to trade in your junky old cell phones. In the subject line of his e-mail to us, reader S. declared his weekend to be the “Worst Best Buy Experience Ever.” We wouldn’t go that far, maybe because our bar is set a little low for what the “worst” experience at any given retailer should be. It was pretty irritating, though.
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Straight Talk Wireless Introduces iPhone 5 With $45 Unlimited Everything: What’s The Catch?
By 1.11.13
Starting today, you can go to your neighborhood Walmart store and pick up an iPhone 5 from Walmart’s own house-brand carrier, StraightTalk Wireless. With it you’ll get a $45 unlimited talk/text/data plan. Instead of a phone subsidy, you’ll be paying the unlocked-phone price for your handset: $649 for a 16GB iPhone 5. That’s the same price you’ll pay for an unlocked phone straight from Apple, but Walmart offers something extra: you can finance your purchase and pay $25 per month with no interest…for 26 months. [More]
Best Buy’s Holiday Sales Flatten Out, Which Is Not All That Horrible
By 1.11.13
Following a year in which the nation’s largest electronics retailer saw both its CEO resign under the cloud of scandal, its founder step down in order to attempt to buy the company back, and three quarters of declining sales, news of merely flat holiday sales is good news for Best Buy. [More]
Not-So-Local Florist Disappoints My Mom With Subpar Roses
By 1.11.13
The Consumerist Garden of Discontent is a recurring theme on this site, because it seems that delivered flowers will never quite measure up to the photos in catalogs or on the website. In hindsight, Teresa wishes that she had just picked up a few bouquets at Trader Joe’s and presented them to her mom in person before she left town. She could have done some quality control, and the end result would have been a lot prettier. [More]
Here Are Some Old Photos That Came With My “New” Camera From Kmart
By 1.10.13
Bargain hunters know that buying a floor model of something like a camera or a computer can be a good way to save a bit of money, especially on electronics. But floor models lack that appeal when you pay full price… and you were never told it was used. [More]
Does Your Home Need A Window-Cleaning Robot? Good News!
By 1.10.13
As predicted, there isn’t a whole lot of exciting news out of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As a person who looks forward to our future total dependence on robots, however, I was excited to see footage of the Ecovacs Winbot 7 in action. The Winbot is like a Roomba that sticks to windows, and supposedly zooms up and down them, cleaning all the way. [More]
Senators Call For An End To Payday Lending By Banks
By 1.10.13
Four of the nation’s largest banks — Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bank, U.S. Bank and Regions Bank — are involved in high-interest, short-term loans that may not always be called “payday” loans but might as well be. Thus, a group of five U.S. senators have asked regulators to put a stop to the practice altogether. [More]
Chase CEO Admits That His Executives “Acted Like Children” Following Huge Loss
By 1.10.13
Remember last year when JPMorgan Chase lost billions of dollars in a matter of weeks? One might think that well-heeled, experienced executives at one of the country’s largest banks would have buckled down and faced the problem with a steel-like resolve. Apparently not. [More]
Ever Bought A CD From Amazon? It Might Be Eligible For Free MP3 Conversion
By 1.10.13
This morning, Amazon.com launched a new service called AutoRip that allows buyers of certain music CDs to automatically receive access to downloadable MP3s of the album via Amazon’s Cloud Player. But the most interesting feature is that it will convert any qualifying CD you’ve purchased on Amazon since 1998. [More]
Oxygen Products, Oxygen Products, Everywhere! But Can It Really Get Into Your Skin?
By 1.9.13
The thing about oxygen is, we all need it to survive and thus, we all agree it’s a pretty good thing. No one’s like, “Oh yeah, oxygen? I’ll pass.” As something that is essential to our existence, companies have caught on to its universal appeal and have increasingly been marketing products promising infusions/boosts/bursts/whathaveyou of oxygen that ostensibly are good for your skin, because oxygen is so awesome. [More]
Walmart Employee: Don’t Blame Cashiers For Requiring You To Show Your I.D.
By 1.9.13
In an era of identity theft and growing concerns about privacy, it’s not hard to understand why shoppers are hesitant to provide their photo IDs and phone numbers for something as simple as buying groceries. But one Walmart employee asks that consumers please refrain from taking out their frustration on him and his coworkers. [More]
Sears’ Manifesto-Writing Chairman Eddie Lampert Will Take Over As Fifth CEO In 7 Years
By 1.8.13
Once upon a time, a man won an award for being the “Worst CEO of the Year” without actually being the CEO of anything. Who is this man? Well, he’s the next CEO of Sears. Constant readers of Consumerist will be familiar with Mr. Eddie Lampert, the chairman of Sears Holdings and mastermind of the Kmart/Sears merger. Eddie is a big thinker. He famously published a 15-page manifesto in 2009 which covered everything from the economic meltdown to civil liberties, and contained a suggested reading list that included free-market Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek.
[More]
Target Sells Most Awesome Router Ever For Only $29.99
By 1.8.13
Consumerist reader Cameron was recently looking for a router at his local Target when he was intrigued by the “Weekly WOW” sale on a Belkin model. But when he looked at the specs, he was just blown away. [More]
How Does Shutterfly Still Exist?
By 1.8.13 — Updated: 1.9.13
More than one thousand online photo-printing services have entered the marketplace in the history of the Web. Only a few remain. The most successful survivor is Shutterfly, founded in 1999. The 16 billion pictures currently sitting on Shutterfly’s servers aren’t your garden-variety snapshots of sandwiches and shoes. The pictures on Shutterfly are treasured images, and destined to decorate photobooks, prints, calendars, wall decals, mugs, greeting cards, and other items. [More]
