Passover might not be starting until next week, but Coca Cola has already begun distributing 2-liter bottles of its kosher formula, which replaces high fructose corn syrup with sugar, to stores around the country. I know because I’ve got some chilling in the fridge. [More]
Retail Services
Family With Shattered TV Takes Best Buy To Court, Wins
By 3.21.10
Remember the Florida family whose sad story of a smashed TV we shared on Super Bowl Sunday? When they unboxed their 50-inch plasma screen HDTV, they found a cracked screen and a world of sadness. They took a page from the Consumerist playbook and sued Best Buy in small claims court. When the mega-retailer failed to send a representative, they won a default judgment. [More]
Walmart Racist PA System Prank Culprit Arrested
By 3.20.10
The police in Washington Township, N.J. have tracked down and arrested the alleged perpetrator of last weekend’s unauthorized PA announcement of “Attention Walmart customers: All black people leave the store now.” It will surprise absolutely no one that the suspect is a 16-year-old boy. [More]
Geek Squad To Provide Yet Another Useless Service For 3D Televisions
By 3.20.10
HDGuru reports that Best Buy is at it again, charging innocent customers for truly unnecessary services. This time, they’re offering to sync your 3D glasses as part of a Geek Squad package to hook up your new 3D TV and Blu-Ray player. Sure, the connection services are logical enough, but the glasses sync thing makes no sense. Why? Because 3D glasses don’t need to be synced. [More]
Kmart Posts Amazing Coupon On Internet, Then Forgets Internet Exists
By 3.20.10 — Updated: 12.26.13
Here’s a helpful piece of advice for Kmart and Sears Holding Company as a whole: if you’re going to issue a coupon valid only for a few stores and post it on your Web site, don’t put the words “valid at all stores” on it. See, there is this thing called the “internet,” which people like to use to share coupons and deals. Customers printed out what looked like a perfectly valid coupon from Kmart’s site, then were treated like criminals and accused of fraud when they actually tried to use those coupons. [More]
Walmart-Owned Store Delivers Sex Lube Instead Of Kids' Bubble Bath
By 3.19.10
Not even a week after Walmart-owned British retail chain Asda decided that “Fat Balls” might be an inappropriate name for bird food, they also managed to royally screw up an order for kids’ bubble bath and sent a bottle of lube instead. [More]
Bank Of America Has The Crappiest Credit Card Customers
By 3.19.10
Bank of America is tops when it comes to having the most deadbeat customers. They are leading the pack in delinquent customers and charged off accounts. That ravenous acquisition strategy’s not looking so hot now, eh? You can gorge, but eventually you have to pay the check. Here’s how the major credit card companies stacked up Jan-Feb. [More]
NJ Walmart To End Racism By Reducing Access To PA System
By 3.19.10
Remember that New Jersey Walmart where some fool used the store’s public address system to tell all the African-American shoppers to leave? They’re trying to prevent it from happening again by cutting back on the number of in-store phones that have access to the PA. [More]
Citibank Cannot Credit Your Credit Card Rewards To Your Account, No Matter What
By 3.19.10
Chris had a pretty simple request. He writes that he wanted his credit card issuer, Citibank, to save a few trees and save him some legwork, and credit his rewards to his account instead of cutting a check. No one in the Citibank call center hierarchy had the power to make this happen. [More]
Data Shows Horrifying Bank Of America Refinance Story Actually Typical
By 3.18.10
The Chicago Reporter is a publication that reports on race and poverty in Chicago. This issue’s cover story is about mortgage modifications and the struggles that homeowners face when trying to access the Obama Administration’s refinance program. Apparently, banks are so incompetent that it can be almost impossible to actually modify your mortgage.
The article tells the story of a small business owner who thought he would always be able to pay his mortgage, but whose work dried up with the economy, and his wife, who was laid off from her full-time job. The husband was injured on the job, and the medical bills piled up. [More]
Amazon Releases Kindle For Mac
By 3.18.10
Until now, if a Mac owner wanted to read a Kindle e-book on his computer, they were out of luck (or used something like Parallels and had the Kindle for PC app running on Windows). But that all ended today, with the release of Kindle for Mac. [More]
Target Wants To Scan My ID To Buy Canned Air
By 3.17.10
If you’re buying beer or renting a car, you probably understand why someone would want to see a photo ID. But Consumerist reader GyroMight was perplexed when he went to pick up some aerosol computer duster at Target and had to fork over his license to make the purchase. [More]
Avatar To Get No-Frills DVD Release; No 3-D Version Until Next Year
By 3.17.10
Because James Cameron’s Avatar — that little indie film about indigenous people fighting against corporate greed — apparently didn’t make enough money at the box office, Twentieth Century Fox has decided to come out with three different DVD versions of the flick. [More]
Walmart Wants To Know Who Made The Racist Announcement Over Their PA System
By 3.17.10
This past Sunday, a male voice came over the public-address system at a Walmart in New Jersey and said, “Attention Walmart customers: All black people leave the store now.” Understandably, customers and employees were pretty offended. One of the shoppers made sure that store management and local media outlets were made aware of what happened, and Walmart apologized–over the PA system, fittingly–on Sunday evening. Store officials say they’re now reviewing security footage to find out who made the announcement. [More]
Walmart Adding 500 More MoneyCenters Nationwide In 2010
By 3.16.10
While banks have spent the last two years consolidating and closing, it looks like people have been turning elsewhere for their financial services. Walmart — you might have heard of them — just opened up their 1,000th in-store MoneyCenter and have announced they’re rolling them out to 500 more locations before the end of 2010. [More]
This Is What Kids Did For Fun In The 80s
By 3.16.10
Josh at GeekSix unearthed a comic book ad that might be familiar to you if you were a kid in the 80s. Olympic Sales Club was one of those door-to-door greeting card companies that enlisted kids across the country to sell crap to neighbors in exchange for merch your parents wouldn’t buy you. [More]
Target And Target.com Are Not The Same Company, So Just Deal With It
By 3.16.10
Reader Patricia is angry and somewhat baffled by Target’s insistence that Target and Target.com are not the same company and its not a Target store’s problem if the website is messed up and tells you to drive 25 miles to buy something that isn’t in stock. [More]
