The malls are hushed, the streets of city shopping districts have stopped humming and the online buyingpalooza has slowed. Yep, it’s that time of the year after the holidays when everyone is finally done shopping. Unfortunately for retailers, they’re facing the biggest post-holiday depression since 2009. [More]
Retail Services
CES Unveiled: Where Manufacturers Bring Their B Game To Mildly Impress The Press
By 1.9.12
The actual tech stampede that is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas doesn’t start until Tuesday, but the press gets here a few days early so manufacturers can officially announce what’s behind those curtains on the show floor. Additionally, there’s the annual CES Unveiled event, in which a handful of exhibitors compete with the free food and drinks in an attempt to impress the press. You occasionally run into some items — like the baby monitor-type system for elderly people — but this year’s group had few standouts. [More]
CES 2012: The Future Will Be Like The Present, Only With Fewer Buttons
By 1.9.12
In the future, everything will be a computer, and those computers will have fewer buttons. That’s the takeaway from a speech by Shawn DuBravac of the Consumer Electronics Association. [More]
Bank Of America Plaza So Close To Becoming Epicenter Of Irony
By 1.6.12
Ever since it stupidly acquired Countrywide Financial — and all of that company’s toxic home loans — the Bank of America name has become synonymous with rampant, and occasionally screwed-up, foreclosures. Now the tallest building in Atlanta is facing foreclosure — and it just happens to bear the BofA name. [More]
Home Depot Forgot They Promised To Hang Onto My Rug Until I Decided If I'd Exchange It Or Not, Refuses Refund
By 1.6.12
Marc knew for a fact that he didn’t want to keep the rug he and his wife bought from Home Depot, so he was pleased when an employee was helpful enough to suggest they wait on a refund in case a new shipment had any rugs they’d like. He even offered to hang onto the rug, instead of lugging it back and forth. Unfortunately, the employee’s memory wasn’t so good. [More]
Best Buy Responds To Reports That It Is Dying A Slow Death
By 1.6.12
With a dwindling market share and increasingly public PR fiascoes, electronics mega-chain Best Buy has seen better days. And after the publication of a lengthy Forbes article detailing the ways in which the retailer is its own worst enemy, some have begun the countdown clock until the boys in blue go bankrupt. We would normally expect Best Buy to treat the Forbes piece the same way they would a complaining customer — by looking the other way and going on a smoke break in the back parking lot. But the CEO of Best Buy must have realized that shareholders know how to use the internet, because he’s gone online to respond to the haters. [More]
Lawsuit Against Frito-Lay: "All-Natural" Means You Shouldn't Be Using Genetically Modified Ingredients
By 1.6.12
One woman in California isn’t about to let a big food company get away with what she says is fraudulent advertising. Frito-Lay is the subject of a new class action suit, which alleges that though they tout certain products as “all natural,” they actually contain genetically modified ingredients, or GMs. [More]
Solving A Problem With StraightTalk Is Not All That Straightforward
By 1.6.12
Like most of the StraightTalk customers we’ve heard from, Barb was happy with Walmart’s mobile phone venture…until something went wrong and she had to deal with their customer service. In her case, the problem was that she ordered a smartphone that didn’t work. Simple enough to solve, right? Well…not quite. [More]
Japanese Sushi Chain Forks Over $736K For 530-Pound Tuna At Auction
By 1.5.12
It’s payback time for Japan, after the best catch of the year went to a foreign buyer three years in a row. But this year, sushi lovers there will get a chance to taste part of a record $736,000, approximately 530-lb bluefin tuna, as a local company won the fish at auction. They’re also giving back to their fellow citizens by not charging exorbitant prices for the special catch. [More]
Cumberland Farms Fires Employee For Having Too Much Cash In The Register
By 1.5.12
Usually when we write about a store staffer getting followed in the wake of a robbery it’s because they dared to do something about it, but a man in Massachusetts says he was given the boot from his Cumberland Farms job because his register had too much cash in it when the store was robbed. [More]
Bank Of America Kicks Man Out Of Mortgage Modification Program Over 80 Cents
By 1.5.12
Tom was in danger of foreclosure and losing his home, so when he was approved for a mortgage modification program by Bank of America, he was relieved. As long as he made his new lower monthly payments on time for three months, he was golden. But one slip of the fingers on his phone’s keypad changed everything, and fast. [More]
Priscilla Of Boston Spray-Paints Unsold Wedding Gowns To Keep Them From Grubby Poor People
By 1.5.12
Priscilla of Boston, a high-end bridal chain best known for making Grace Kelly’s wedding gown, came to an undignified end last week when current parent company David’s Bridal shut it down. This news wouldn’t have made national headlines if an alert shopper in a Minneapolis suburb hadn’t noticed unsold dresses by the rackful being wrecked with red spray paint and tossed in a dumpster. [More]
Is It Time To Start A Best Buy Death Watch?
By 1.5.12
Is much-hated electronics chain Best Buy spiraling out of business and into irrelevance before our eyes? Maybe. But not for a while yet. Writing for Forbes, business expert Larry Downes laid out why the company could be gradually going out of business, one Black Tie Protection Plan at a time. [More]
Liz Claiborne Inc. Ditching Its Name In An Effort To Be Like The Cool Companies
By 1.4.12
Liz Claiborne Inc., the company that brought shoulder-padded suits and mild-mannered sweater sets to women everywhere, wants to shed its old unhip association by changing its name to Fifth & Pacific Cos. [More]
Dunkin' Donuts To Bring Double The Delight With Additional U.S. Locations
By 1.4.12
Bring on the doughnut holes and extremely large iced coffees! Dunkin’ Donuts has announced plans to double its locations in the U.S. There are around 7,000 stores open as of now, and the increase will take place over the next 20 years. [More]
Store Pits Iron Man Vs. Batman In Battle To Bring In More Tips
By 1.4.12
If you’re looking to give people a reason to drop a dime (or preferably a dollar) in that tip jar, how about turning the whole process into a popularity contest that taps into your customers’ inner comic book fan boy/girl? [More]
Sears Has Your Toaster In Maine. You Live In Alaska.
By 1.4.12
In hindsight, Marla would have been better off ordering a toaster and a toaster oven from anywhere except Sears. But she didn’t know that the company has entered the next phase of its existence as a massive anti-capitalist prank, and has now added an absurdist theater aspect to the project. At least, that’s the only explanation for some of the conversations Marla had when her toaster didn’t show up. First, they refused to understand that the toaster wasn’t in the box at all. Then, she received a call to come pick up her floor-model toaster at a store in Maine. Marla lives in Alaska. [More]
Bank Of America Thinks I'm My Own Dad, Turns Me Away During Emergency
By 1.4.12
When Bank of America issued Jorge’s credit card in 1998, for some reason that remains unclear, the card was issued in the name of “Jorge [Lastname] Sr.” Jorge doesn’t have a son named Jorge Junior, and there’s no reason why the account should be set up that way, but Bank of America assured him that this wouldn’t be a problem. And it wasn’t. Until he needed an emergency cash advance, and couldn’t prove to the unfamiliar branch’s satisfaction that he hadn’t, say, stolen his dad’s credit card. [More]
