Sprint decided yesterday that the water was fine at the “prorated ETF/ no contract extensions for rate plan changes” pool party and has jumped right in. You can change your rate plan starting Monday, but will have to wait until sometime next year for the prorated ETFs.
Retail Services
Reader Gets 5-Month Old Overcharge Fixed After Calling Tmobile Executive Switchboard
By 11.8.07
“I woke up this morning particularly frustrated and decided today was the day I was chaining myself to the local t-mobile counter. You know they make you feel like you could be capable of these things. I thought if I wore my best shoes and handbag, people would know I wasn’t crazy :). Deciding against this course of action after about 3 coffee’s, I searched on the internet. After about 30 minutes, I found your article.”
Blank Discs Inside Call Of Duty 4 At Best Buy? Better Open Them In The Store
By 11.8.07
Reader Zak writes to tell us that his copy of Call of Duty 4 was blank. Thankfully, he opened it while he was still inside the Best Buy, so exchanging it wasn’t a problem. (Though some random Geek Squad guy did accuse him of being a scammer.)
I generally read a few of the network sites, Giz, LH and of course for a chuckle I also read Consumerist. Now I lack photo proof of this as I immediately did an illegal u-turn and took my product back to the store, but I’ll let you know anyways.
Morning Deals
By 11.8.07
Home Depot: The Women's Restroom Is A Good Place For This Sign
By 11.7.07
You know what? We’re just going to buy our own. Thanks.
Costco Is A Good Place To Buy Eyeglasses?
By 11.7.07
ABCNews asked a optometrist to write a bifocal prescription and have it filled at Costco, Target, LensCrafters and Walmart, then they asked him to rate the quality of the glasses.
Home Depot Employee Caught Issuing Store Cards To Fake Customers
By 11.7.07
Criminals beware. You can be charged with “first-degree id theft” even if the “person” you’re “ID thefting” is Harvey the Rabbit.
Morning Deals
By 11.7.07
Use A Spreadsheet To Plan Your Gifts
By 11.7.07
This professor of finance proposes you take all the fun out of wildly overspending on last-minute gifts for friends and family, and replace it with the measured, predictable joy of a spreadsheet. However, if you follow his advice, the odds will be much better that you’ll end the year with healthier checking and credit card accounts.
Amazon Pulls Fisher-Price Medical Kit After CR Lead Report
By 11.6.07
Mike Antonucci from the Mercury News tells us that Amazon.com has pulled the lead-tainted Fisher-Price Medical Kit from its website after fielding questions about a Consumer Reports investigation that found “troubling” levels of lead in the blood pressure cuff.
28 Confessions Of A GameStop Shift Supervisor
By 11.6.07
Morning Deals
By 11.6.07
20 Sites Where You Can Find Deals
By 11.6.07
Maybe you’re one of those people who will manage to actually follow through with the whole “home-made, simpler gift giving” concept this season. For the rest of you who don’t want to sit around making dolls and paper-mache serving dishes over the next six weeks, Kiplinger’s has a list of 20 sites to help you score the best prices on your holiday shopping this year.
Strict Curfews Snap Shut On Teen Mallrats
By 11.6.07
A Cleveland mall is enacting a tough teen curfew: no teens without adult accompaniment after 2:30 pm, 7 days a week. While anti-teen curfews are nothing new, the mall’s is the only one to be in effect every single day. According to the mall, packs of unruly teenagers spending little money are driving away legitimate paying shoppers. Apparently this is part of a national trend to keep teens out of malls. Basically, we don’t want teens congregating anywhere in public. It’s best they stick to the rickety barn, the derelict mine shaft, and the defunct mill.
RIAA Defendant: Best Buy Replaced My Hard Drive During Warranty Repair
By 11.5.07
The RIAA defendant who lost her jury trial, Jammie Thomas, is telling her side of the story on p2pnet. Of particular interest: She claims that Best Buy made the decision to replace her hard drive, under the terms of her extended warranty, 6 months before she was served with the RIAA’s subpoena.
Airports Are Being Transformed Into Shopping Malls
By 11.5.07
9/11 had an unforeseen consequence that likely annoys anti-Americans and cheers President “Shop For Freedom” Bush: it triggered an explosion of self-contained shopping malls at airports across the country. One airport consultant says, “All of the sudden, any airport … can be a retail opportunity. It really has turned into a very different environment than it was 10 or 20 years ago,” which is why so many large airports today look like compressed shopping malls instead of travel hubs.
GameStop's Golden Price Tags Mean Higher Value, Not "Used"
By 11.5.07
The great thing about a used game is someone else has already worked out all the bugs and made it better—at least, that’s what we assume this GameStop wants us to believe, since they’ve got the used version priced $5 more than the brand new one. That’s why the sticker is golden, see, to show that it’s more valuable.
Pricewarring With Walmart, Best Buy Replaces Backordered HD DVD Players With Upgraded Ones
By 11.5.07
Best Buy met one of Walmart’s “secret deals” punch for punch but soon found itself in a bind trying to go up against the discount retailer. Walmart was selling Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD players for $98.97. BestBuy countered by dropping the price on theirs to $99.99. There was a run in-store and online quickly ran into backorders, backorders which would probably be never fulfilled, seeing as the Toshiba HD-A2 is a discontinued product. BestBuy could have told all the shoppers to shove it, but instead Best Buy said they would fulfill the orders with the HD-A3, retailing normally for $299.99.
