../../../..//2008/03/03/restoration-hardware-has-rejected-a/
Restoration Hardware has rejected a takeover bid by Sears and will be bought out by a private equity firm, Catterton Partners.
Retail Services
By 3.3.08
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A gas leak at the Plymouth, New Hampshire Walmart has lead to the hospitalization of three workers. [Boston .com]
Detained And Harassed At Walmart For Not Showing A Receipt
By 3.3.08
Reader J was detained and harassed by some Walmart employees on his way out of the store the other day. J had already put his receipt inside his wallet after purchasing a $25 shower rack when a Walmart employee demanded to see his receipt. J declined and continued exiting the store. That’s when things got weird. First, he was grabbed by a Walmart employee, then another customer started pushing him back inside the store.
Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables?
By 3.3.08 — Updated: 3.4.13
Can you tell the difference between music that passed through a pricey Monster stereo Cable, and a coat hanger? A reader forwarded us a post from the Audioholics Home Theater Forum and its author says no. He says his brother ran an experiment on him and four other audio aficionados listening to a new CD from a new group blindfolded. Seven different songs were played, each time heard with the speaker hooked up to Monster Cables, and the other time, hooked up to coat hanger wire. Nobody could determine which was the Monster Cable and which was the coat hanger. The kicker? None of the subjects even knew that coat hangers were going to be used. This is, of course, “nothing new,” a Google of “monster cables vs coat hangers” shows that some users have been saying this for a while. Still, this is an experiment begging to be recreated under controlled conditions (say, for instance, a double-blind test). Science fair project! Read how it went down, inside…
Morning Deals
By 3.3.08
Bank Of America Stranded Me In Japan Without Cash On My Honeymoon
By 3.1.08
Before leaving for his honeymoon, Derek called Bank of America to make sure he could rely on his debit card while he was in Japan. Bank of America assured him that he would have no problem accessing money. Yet on the third day of his honeymoon, neither he nor his wife could draw cash from their cards, stranding them with only $15 in cash.
Reader Sues Best Buy In Small Claims Court And Wins
By 2.29.08
Should it take several months and a small claims lawsuit to get Best Buy to take back their defective washing machine? No, but that’s what it did take for reader Keith.
Morning Deals
By 2.29.08
Home Depot CEO Responds To Receipt Checking Story
By 2.29.08
Home Depot’s CEO, Frank Blake, responded to Matt’s complaint about being unlawfully detained by the Washington D.C. Metropolitan police after refusing to show his receipt to a Home Depot employee.
Sprint Loses $29.5 Billion Dollars In A Single Quarter
By 2.29.08
Sprint has announced a fourth quarter loss of $29.5 billion, says the Chicago Tribune. Most of the loss is due to a one-time $29.5 billion writedown of its purchase of Nextel. The wireless carrier says it expects 1.2 million additional customers to leave this quarter, citing dropped calls and poor customer service as their reason for seeking less frustrating pastures.
Chief Executive Dan Hesse, who took over in December, said business is worse than he expected and is deteriorating.
Sprint Unveils National Unilimited Everything Plan
By 2.28.08
Starting tomorrow, Sprint will offer an unlimited everything plan for $100. That’s unlimited unlimited voice, data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, TV, music, GPS navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect. The move comes after all the other carriers announced unlimited voice plans for $100, which itself was a reaction to Sprint’s limited deployment of an unlimited plan for $100. What comes next? We’re guessing family plan deals that are better than simply $200 for two lines, $300 for three lines, etc, and perhaps even price drops.
HSBC Is The Most Identity-Theft Prone Bank
By 2.28.08
If you’re a customer with Bank of America or HSBC, you’re more likely to be a victim of identity theft, according to a new report. Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley, compiled a list of all the banks mentioned in identity theft complaints filed with the FTC for January, March and September of 2006. Bigger banks obviously have more incidents, so Hoofnagle factored in their total number of deposits.”I’ve been working for years to try to spark a market, a true market, for competition on preventing fraud,” Hoofnagle told the NYT. “Some of these institutions have attempted to compete based on advertisements, but I’m a real believer in the idea that if you give consumers information, they can make better decisions.” This is only a fraction of the banks included, showing the worst offenders. Full graphs, inside…
"For Security Purposes, This Card Is Not Active" Is A Lie
By 2.28.08
When you get a new or replacement credit card in the mail, you have to call the number on the back to activate it, or else you can’t use it, right? Wrong. Despite the sticker on the back that says, “For security purposes, this card is not active,” credit card companies are mailing out cards that can be used without phone activation. This is a problem if the letter containing your credit card is intercepted by an identity thief, like what happened to reader PC Guy. The kicker? He didn’t even request the card, it was a forcible reissue when his store-branded card switched from Visa to Mastercard. His story, inside.
Morning Deals
By 2.28.08
Unlawfully Detained At Home Depot For Not Showing Receipt
By 2.27.08
Reader Matt has launched the dreaded EECB (Executive Email Carpet Bomb) on Home Depot—attaching a copy of a formal complaint that he filed with the Metropolitan Police in Washington, D.C..
By 2.27.08
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Home Depot posts its first annual sales decline and fourth-quarter profit at the retailer falls more than 27 percent. [NYT]
Email Home Depot CEO Francis Blake
By 2.27.08
The email address for the CEO of Home Depot is Frank_Blake@homedepot.com. The corporate email address format for Home Depot generally follows the format firstname_lastname@homedepot.com. Good for when you’ve tried the basic customer service lines but you still find your home improvement customer service needs improving.
The Secret Lives Of Consumer Reports Secret Shoppers
By 2.27.08
Stacking pints of ice cream on the floor of the supermarket is bound to make the stocker mad. You can’t tell him that you’re a Consumer Reports secret shopper and that you just need to make sure you get nine pints that came from the same production line on the same date. So Jon goes into his “Rain Man” routine, and starts chanting, “Count the vanilla, count the vanilla, gotta count the vanilla,” and the eventually the stocker goes away. Such are the exciting times and lives of the 94 brave men and women who go undercover as everyday consumers to buy the products that get taken back to the Consumer Reports testing facilities, often concocting cover stories to explain, for instance, why they’re buying five different kinds of washing machines at once. WIRED has the story.
