For products that don’t kill you, we usually pay 6.9%, but for some states have seen fit to tax cellphones at exorbitant rates, like Illinois’ 21.05% or New York’s 21.71%. Why? Probably because people don’t notice or complain very much and so the states get tidy chunk of extra revenue. One Forbes writer who moved from New York to L.A. was still stuck paying New York taxes, the highest in the country. When he complained, Verizon said they couldn’t do anything because they link area of primary usage to your area code. If he wanted to pay L.A. rates, he would have to get an L.A. number, and give up his New York number. Instead, he went and bought a phone in Idaho, provided an Idaho address, and switched to paperless billing. Now he enjoys the small potatoes rate of 7.71%. He admits that this “probably crosses the line.” One must also admit that cellphone taxes have crossed the line, as have cellphone companies that shortcut the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act by determining the “area of primary usage” based on your area code or billing address, instead of detecting where you actually use the phone the most. Inside, a list of cellphone taxes by state.
Retail Services
Reader Saves $950 By Ridding Life Of Fees, Overpayments
Moriconi writes in to tell us how he was able to save $950 this week by uprooting the hidden fees and renegotiating the things in his life he was paying too much for. Awesome! Here’s his true story:
AT&T Data Outages Hit Midwest, AT&T Says Nothing
Rick in Chicago wrote to us this morning to let us know that he hasn’t been able to access AT&T’s 3G network all day. So far, AT&T has told him nothing, nor have they made an announcement: “text messaging still seems to work, so they could send out a text message to let people know ,” he IMs us. He got confirmation that it was the network and not his company-issued phone from his company’s tech department. This blog says it’s 3G and Edge, while this blog says its UMTS that’s down and disabling Treos and Blackberries.
Amazon Tells Customers, "Surprise, You're Pregnant!"
Amazon sent out some unexpected bundles of email joy earlier this week, when it let unsuspecting couples know that not only did they have a baby gift registry, but that someone had bought them something off of it. Julee writes, “I was shocked to find out we were expecting a child. So was my husband. And that someone had been stalking us online early enough in the process to know to buy us a gift!” She asked her married friends and found out that they, too, had received similar good news. Babies for everyone! Hooray!
EECB Stops Improper Searches At New Mexico Walmart
Yesterday I sent an e-mail bomb to several executives at Walmart. The concern was that the store was requiring you to provide your receipt upon leaving the store (as in Sam’s club, but at Walmart). As we all know, this is a hot topic issue, and I expected Walmart to ignore my e-mails. But to my surprise, after writing my e-mail on Sunday afternoon, I got a reply shortly after 8am! Here is my letter —
Tmobile Sued For Charging For Unwanted Text Messages
Tmobile was hit with a class action suit yesterday over its charging customers for unwanted text messages. Unscrupulous marketers can get your cellphone number, send you “premium” texts (for dating services, daily jokes, horoscopes, etc), and then have Tmobile bill you for them. Tmobile gets to keep a piece of the profit. Other cellphone companies let you disable text messages sent from the internet, where most text spam originates, or turn off text messages all together. Tmobile has refused to give customers this option.
Happy Ending To Best Buy Refuses To Honor 2 for $25 DVD Sale Story
A few days ago Jason’s story about Best Buy’s bait-and-switch shot to internet prominence (137,166 pageviews on Consumerist and 4668 diggs), and now he’s happy, has a $200 gift card to Best Buy, and a free copy of Saw IV. Let’s recap: Jason went to Best Buy and saw a tag in-store advertising 2 DVDs for $25. He chose to buy two copies of 3:10 to Yuma. At checkout, it rang up for $19.99 a piece. When contested, the clerk pulled out a different circular that said “Buy Saw IV with any of these 3 movies for $25.” Jason and a series of store employees disagreed for a long time about whether the circular applied to the tag, and Jason left the store with a $19.99 copy of 3:10 to Yuma, and a story, which he sent to The Consumerist. Then the internets happened. How did he go from screwed to elated? Find out in the exciting conclusion to his customer service misadventure, inside…
Morning Deals
Have A Best Buy Card? Check Your Local Store Before Using It Online
Matt writes in with a tip if you’re unlucky enough to have a Best Buy credit card and plan on using it any time soon: check whether the brick and mortar store near you has any special promotions running first. If so, buy the item from their store instead of online or you’ll be bound by Best Buy’s 90 days same-as-cash terms regardless of whether or not the store is offering a better deal.
How Intelius Bought Your Cellphone Number From The Pizza Guy
How did Intelius compile its directory of people’s private cellphone numbers it now has for sale online? Laws on the books forbid telelphone companies from amassing cell phone directories without customer’s consent, but the laws don’t mention third parties. Instead, Intelius buys them from your friendly, local pizza delivery place. Here’s what the CEO said when asked how people end up in their system: “Geez, [there are] tons of ways — everything from going out to a Web site and buying a ring tone for your phone to putting your phone number down at anything [like] ordering a pizza…There are literally dozens and dozens of ways that a user or a consumer could opt in to a database.” See, it’s legal for businesses to contact you you have business relationship. But companies are turning around and selling these customer databases to places like Intelius, and transferring the right to use the database to these third parties as well. While you’re taking a bite out of that deep-dish, they’re taking a bite out of your privacy.
Morning Deals
Virgin Mobile Can't Seem To Close Dead Woman's Account
Rachel’s stepsister passed away last April, but when she called to cancel her pre-paid mobile account Virgin told her that instead of sending in a death certificate, she should just shut off the phone and ignore it. After 90 days of inactivity, it would automatically be canceled. “I asked if they wouldn’t take a death certificate to close the account, but I was assured that it would be faster to simply let the account run out.” Instead, they added some sort of extra minutes promotion to the account that extended it to the present, so ten months later, it’s still active.
Ex-Manager Sues Best Buy For Telling "Target" That He "Sucked"
Ex-Best Buy manager Michael Oliveri, may “suck,” but he’s pretty darn clever. After he was fired from Best Buy he applied with Circuit City and Target, but became suspicious when job offers from those companies were abruptly terminated.
Intelius Sells Your Unlisted And Unpublished Cellphone Number Online
If you thought your cellphone number was safe, think again. Intellus just launched the first ever online cellphone directory. Oh, you never gave them permission, they went ahead and scraped the internet, bought lists from data resellers and deployed data mining techniques.
Buy More! Save Nothing!
Here are a few Walmart photos that we’ve noticed. It sort of makes us wonder:
Walmart Says It Will Cut Prices In Order To Save The Economy
Walmart says it’s going to cut prices 10-30% in order to help “cash-strapped consumers” and keep them “excited about shopping.”
$1 Billion ETF Class Action Against Verizon Approved
Somehow, an arbitrator has approved a massive $1 billion class action lawsuit against Verizon over their early termination fees. In letting the lawsuit proceed, the arbitrator wrote, “…millions of class members are entitled to adjudication of the central common questions of fact or law in this arbitration related to whether the $175 early termination fee imposed by respondents Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless … is based upon an unenforceable liquidated damage clause.” With cellphone companies switching to prorated ETFs and the rise in ETF-related lawsuits around the country, one wonders if we won’t see the death of ETFs in the next few years. By that time, cellphone companies will have figured out a new technique to keep people from leaving their contracts.
