Last month, thousands of Instacart shoppers and drivers — the people who get paid to collect and then drop off grocery orders for customers of the online service — were notified that they would soon be seeing a difference in their paychecks as the company overhauled its tipping and scheduling policies. This announcement hasn’t exactly gone over swimmingly, and now several Instacart workers are telling Consumerist why they have misgivings about the change. [More]
Retail Services
Nordstrom Rack, hhgregg, TJMaxx Also Want You To Know They’re Closed On Thanksgiving Day
By 10.12.16 — Updated: 10.13.16
For the last half-decade or so, the beginning of Black Friday has gradually crept back, with mainstream American retailers giving the shopping holiday precedence over the actual holiday, opening on Thanksgiving Day. Then the trend reversed, as retailers came to realize that they could harvest good publicity by staying closed on the holiday and making sure that the public knows it. We’re guessing that they didn’t earn enough money to make opening on the holiday worth their while. [More]
Suzuki And Toyota Consider Something Between A Merger And A Partnership
By 10.12.16
While Suzuki decided to high-tail it out of the United States market a few years ago, the company and its periodically spider-infested cars are still around. They’re especially big in India and other developing markets in Asia. That’s why its announcement of a partnership or maybe even a merger with auto giant Toyota has industry watchers intrigued. [More]
Cheap Prime, On-Campus Kiosks Meant To Get College Students Hooked On Amazon
By 10.11.16
How do you get newly minted adults hooked on your service for life? If you’re Amazon, the secret is to provide them with everything that they need at a discount, and deliver it as quickly as possible. The combination of discounted Prime service and easy on-campus pickup is meant to hook college students on Prime during their formative years, and it’s turning out to be very effective. [More]
NYC Pharmacy Instituting 7% “Man Tax” To Highlight Gender Pricing Discrimination
By 10.11.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
In an effort to bring awareness to discrimination in gender pricing — for example, charging a so-called “pink tax” on feminine hygiene products — one New York pharmacy has a new rule: male customers have to pay a 7% tax on items for men. [More]
Mall Of America, Staples, BJ’s Make Sure You Know They’re Closed On Thanksgiving
By 10.5.16 — Updated: 11.14.16
It was about five years ago that the Thanksgiving shopping trend began to metastasize throughout the retail business: opening times on Black Friday crept back from the wee hours of Black Friday morning to the late hours of Thanksgiving. Malls joined big-box stores, and Thanksgiving Day was fun for a few years. Then a widespread backlash began, and retailers took advantage of that. [More]
Online And Offline Retailers Get Started On Their Seasonal Hiring
By 10.3.16
Yes, it’s only the beginning of October, but it’s time for retailers to start preparing for the season of unbridled commerce. This year, retailers are finding that the labor market is more tight, and they need to plan ahead and maybe even offer extras to entice the best seasonal workers. [More]
Man Smashes Apple Store Merchandise, Yelling About Consumer Rights
By 9.30.16
We don’t know how Apple wronged this customer in Dijon, France, but he caught everyone’s attention when he walked calmly around a store, smashing iPhones and at least one computer with a steel ball. During his smashing spree, he told employees and shoppers about his grievances with the company, then tried to leave the store before mall security caught up with him. [More]
Here’s Why Mall Owners Stepped In To Save Aeropostale
By 9.27.16
The winners of the bankruptcy auction for teen clothing retailer Aeropostale weren’t a competing clothing chain or another retailer hoping to get into the teen clothing biz: it was a joint venture by mall landlords, who apparently didn’t want to face another hole in their shopping centers left by a bankrupt retailer. [More]
New Jersey Walmart Wants You To Get Exercise By Parking Further Away
By 9.26.16
We’ve all been there: driving up and down the lanes of the local big box store’s parking lot seeking out the closest spot to the entrance. Now one Walmart store wants you to stop that, you know, in the name of being healthy. [More]
Best Buy Wants Fresh New Crowdfunded Products For Its Shelves
By 9.26.16
Best Buy has managed to survive, defying the expectations of experts and shoppers, by creating themed mini-stores and price-matching its online competition. Now the company has a new idea: teaming up with companies that make popular crowdfunded products to get them on the shelves of Best Buy. [More]
PetSmart Takes Part In T-Mobile Tuesdays, Forgets To Limit Freebie To T-Mobile Customers
By 9.20.16
Here’s the problem with releasing a coupon on the internet: without disclaimers or digital limits on the coupon itself, it can be infinitely reproduced, used over and over, and used by people it wasn’t intended for. That’s what reportedly happened when T-Mobile offered a restriction-free coupon for $7 worth of stuff at PetSmart as part of its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion that was a little too unrestricted. [More]
Did Target Stop Selling Miracle Whip? Depends On Where You Live
By 9.19.16
Reader Krystal went to her local Target store to look for a pretty mundane grocery item: Miracle Whip, the “salad dressing” that many Americans sub in for mayonnaise. Employees told her that Target was no longer selling it at all, and she turned to Consumerist for help, wondering what Target had against Miracle Whip. “Why would they discontinue selling a pantry staple?” she asked. It’s more complicated than that, but Target hasn’t ditched the spread chain-wide. [More]
Returning Online Purchases Gives Shoppers Reason To Actually Visit The Mall
By 9.19.16
Will bringing their online purchases back to a physical returns counter make shoppers happier about the shopping process, and maybe cause them to buy things at an actual mall? A startup called HappyReturns hopes so, hoping to work with a variety of online retailers to collect their stuff at malls without having to pay for return shipping. Will it save shoppers work? Not necessarily, and they might actually shop at the mall. [More]
At Least 24 More Kmart Stores To Close By End Of 2016
By 9.19.16
At the end of last week, employees at Kmart stores across the country received bad but not entirely unexpected news: their stores are closing by the end of 2016, and they will lose their jobs. We can confirm that dozens of locations in 11 states plan to close on or before Dec. 11, and will most likely add more locations to this list later today or later this week. [More]
11-Year-Old Finds Bag Of Meth Inside Video Game He Bought At GameStop
By 9.2.16
Unexpected freebies that come with a purchase are one thing, but bags filled with meth stashed in a video game case, well, that’s a case for law enforcement. [More]
Why Does My Amazon Order Have A Walmart Or Target Shipping Order Inside?
By 9.1.16
It doesn’t happen a lot, especially if you’re an Amazon Prime member, but occasionally if you order an item from an Amazon third-party seller you might end up with an item shipped in a Target box, or containing a shipping receipt from Walmart. It’s not illegal or a scam, but it probably means you paid more than you should have. [More]
Lenovo Says It’s Talked With Amazon About Bringing Alexa To PCs
By 9.1.16
We’ve gotten used to Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa adding new capabilities to her repertoire, like buying Prime-eligible products, paying credit card bills, ordering pizza, and then leading workouts to exercise off said pizza, but thus far she’s done it all from within the Amazon’s line of devices like the Echo and Echo Dot. That might be changing. [More]
