Amazon either ran out of inventory or didn’t catch several pricing errors on their Black Friday sale until after they’d already begun to ship products, but either way a lot of customers just had their orders canceled. One customer even got tricked into re-purchasing a wireless mouse at full price because the CSR promised him Amazon would honor the sale price—then after placing the order received an email from another CSR saying that the promise was no good and he’d be charged the full $89.99. Then the CSRs continued their all-drinking, all-smoking holiday office party over at Amazon Customer Service.
Retail Services
Liveblogging The Senate Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations Hearing On Arbitrary Credit Card Rate Increases
By 12.4.07
Today at 9:30 a.m., Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) will continue his investigation into the unfair and deceptive practices of the credit card industry. Today’s topic: arbitrary rate increases for cardholders in good standing. The hearing picks up where Senator Levin left off in March, when he questioned the use of excessive fees, interest charges, and the abuse of grace periods.
Shopper Tasered After Using Someone Else's Credit Card At Best Buy
By 12.4.07
The Daytona Beach Police Department say that a woman was tasered last Monday inside of a Best Buy store after attempting to use someone else’s credit card to make a purchase.
By 12.4.07
../../../..//2007/12/04/ric-romero-famous-consumer-reporter/
Ric Romero, famous consumer reporter, wants you to know that some stores offer 10% off if you sign up for their credit card. Also, some stores will email you when they have a sale.
Sears Is #2 Holiday Shopping Destination, Still Can't Make Any Money
By 12.3.07
According to a poll cited by the Chicago Sun-Times, Sears is the #2 holiday shopping destination this year (after Walmart.) So why can’t they make any money?
Walmart Hates DRM
By 12.3.07
Ars Technica says that Walmart has given an ultimatum to “some of the largest record labels, including Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, to provide more of their respective music catalogs in MP3 format (that is, without DRM) next year.”
Best Buy Porn Thief Inquisitions Revealed
By 12.3.07
After reading “How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves,” another fired Geek Squad tech has chimed in to tell us how the internal witch hunt for porn thieves proceeded.
I had worked for Geek Squad for over a year, and Best Buy a year and a half before that and was recently let go. Back when they started scanning computers, they said they found downloaded music and movies on our machine and we were to send them the hard drives. So we boxed them up and sent them out.
Target To Downgrade Return Policy: Receipts Always Required
By 12.3.07
A Target insider writes:“Starting next year, guests will no longer be able to return items without a receipt. This means that if you accidentally lose your receipt, or if your cashier doesn’t give you one, you’re SOL.
By 12.3.07
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19% of 64,000 shoppers surveyed said they set up wishlists with retailers at some point, up from 11% in 2005. [source: NPD Group]
DG Launches DRM-Free Classical Music Store
By 12.3.07
The Internet always seemed like a logical sales outlet for classical music, which has long been the neglected step-child of the record labels. We’re happy to see that last week, Deutsche Grammophon launched a music store that sells DRM-free files of classical recordings—the files are constant bit rate 320 kps MP3s, and prices range “from $/€1.29 for a full-length track to $/€11.99 for an album.”
Man Arrested For Smashing "Dangerous" "Toy Lamp" Outside Walmart
By 12.3.07
Based on an advocacy group’s “10 Most Dangerous Toys” list, an Arkansas man became convinced that a Dora the Explorer lamp sold at Walmart posed an imminent electrical shock threat to any children for whom which it was bought, so he conducted his own personal recall…
Verizon To Go GSM
By 12.2.07
Verizon’s next generation of devices will run on the GSM network that will be used by AT&T and T-Mobile, meaning that in a few years, customers with unlocked phones will be able to move between the three providers without purchasing new equipment. Verizon currently uses a CDMA network along with Sprint, but last week announced that it would use the GSM-protocol LTE (Long Term Evolution) for their fourth-generation data services. Note, Verizon’s LTE phones will not be backwards-compatible with the current GSM networks run by AT&T and T-Mobile. Both are expected to support LTE. And don’t expect to see the new phones anytime soon…
Kmart Loses Toilet Paper Tax Lawsuit
By 12.1.07
Mary Bach, the woman who sued Kmart for charging tax on toilet paper, has won her lawsuit and $100. Kmart offered to settle with Bach, but she declined.
Which Is Better: "Store Cards" Or Store Branded Visas?
By 12.1.07
It has now become common for store to offer, in addition to their regular store-brand credit card, a co-branded Visa, Amex or Mastercard.
Leaks: How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves
By 11.30.07
Best Buy launched a nation-wide internal investigation after we published a video sting op capturing one of their techs stealing porn from our computer. A fired Geek Squad supervisor tells how it all went down…Innocents fired… Liars kept jobs… Store hard drives seized… Pants shat…
The start of the internal Geek Squad investigation began this summer as all of the locations throughout the country were entered through remote connection and scanned for violations. The Geek Squad “precincts” that had bench machines containing serious violations had their hard drives removed and shipped to the corporate office. All of this was done rapidly and under the watchful eye of salary managers who had their jobs threatened if this was not executed properly. My store was lucky enough to have scored well enough on the remote scans to keep our hard drives. I knew at this point that there was serious cause for concern if Best Buy was willing to spend the kind of cash necessary to execute remote scans throughout ALL of its stores in one day.
Verizon Ad Appears Next To Story About Death By Exploding Cellphone
By 11.30.07
This ad for Verizon cellphones is placed right next to an AP story about a South Korean man who may or may not have been killed by a cellphone exploding in his shirt pocket. Someone should invent a fancy technology that excludes advertisers from appearing next to articles when the name of their core product appears in editorial proximity with “death” or “exploding.”
