Just because something is for sale in an outlet store, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good deal, or even that it’s cheaper than the item’s retail price. It is possible to save money while outlet-shopping, though: you just have to know when to shop, where in the store to shop, and to be savvy about programs that your local mall may offer. [More]
Retail Services
DVDs Are More Expensive In Target’s Reality Vortex
By 12.14.15
Like many Americans, I like to shop at Target. However, walking inside the friendly red doors means that shoppers must accept that they’re entering a different reality. Inside the Target Reality Vortex, numbers have no meaning, and ordinary retail logic doesn’t hold up.
Shopping there is easier once you’ve accepted this, but our readers still send us pictures from Target’s reality vortex. [More]
Amazon Adds 4,000 Items To “Prime Now” Delivery, Because You Never Know When You’ll Need A New TV In One Hour
By 12.10.15
When it launched, Amazon’s Prime Now service aimed to quickly provide customers with household necessities like toothpaste and paper towels. But now, just in time for the holidays, the company is apparently redefining what necessity means by adding some 4,000 items to the delivery roster including big-screen TVs, popular toys and baking supplies. [More]
Walmart Shoppers Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Their Stuff In Stores Using Retailer’s Smartphone App
By 12.10.15
In a sign that Walmart might be giving up on CurrentC — a mobile payment system that a consortium led by the retailer dreamed up a few years ago that has yet to become a reality — the chain has announced that shoppers in its stores will soon be able to pay for their stuff with the Walmart smartphone app. [More]
Yes, Amazon Will Adjust Prices They’ve Raised If You Ask Nicely
By 12.10.15
Amazon is always adjusting their prices, and sometimes those adjustments aren’t in your favor. When you throw an item in your cart and the price suddenly rises by five or ten bucks, that’s enough to make you look for it elsewhere, or maybe not buy the item at all if it wasn’t something that you needed. Yet there is a way to get Amazon to bring the price back down: ask nicely. [More]
Target Pop-Up Claims To Show The Possible Future Of Retail: There Are No Carts
By 12.9.15
The future of retail is quickly becoming a reality with more shoppers ditching trips to the store in favor of ordering groceries and other products from the comfort of their own home. Despite these changing preferences, one of the country’s latest retailers wants you to know that the physical store isn’t going anywhere. But the carts on the other hand — they’re toast. [More]
Patti LaBelle’s Sweet Potato Pies Are Back At Walmart, Company Calls It A “Christmas Miracle”
By 12.8.15
Thanksgiving may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean Walmart’s ready to give up on the celebrity pie fever that swept the country last month. No siree. Instead, the company says it has restocked the unusually popular Patti LaBelle-branded sweet potato pie — with an assist from some two million pounds of sweet potatoes. [More]
Amazon Adding Starz, Showtime, A Bunch Of Other Tiny Streaming Services As Add-Ons To Prime Video
By 12.8.15
Amazon Buys Its Own Fleet Of Branded Semi-Trucks (But Don’t Expect Them At Your Door)
By 12.4.15
You may soon see semi-trucks cruising around the highways and byways of America branded with the Amazon logo, not because the company is going to start delivering its own stuff, but because it wants to become more efficient at how its inventory gets from one company facility to another. [More]
Target Agrees To Pay Banks $39.4M For Expenses Resulting From 2013 Data Breach
By 12.2.15
Target continues to put the disastrous 2013 holiday-season data breach behind it, agreeing today to pay $39.4 million to banks claiming they lost money during the hack. [More]
Amazon Sends Me Someone Else’s Order. Why Don’t They Care If I Send It Back?
By 12.2.15 — Updated: 5.25.17
In the midst of all the shopping on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Wet and Wild Wednesday, Thanksgiving 2.0 For People Who Were Out Of Town Or In The Hospital Last Week Thursday, and Black Friday All Over Again Because Why Not?, there are oodles of Amazon packages landing on shoppers’ doorsteps. In some rare cases, those packages might end up on the wrong doorstep, so why does Amazon not seem terribly concerned about getting those items back? [More]
Walmart Employee Says He Was Fired For Waiting 30 Minutes To Turn In $350 He Found In Parking Lot
By 12.2.15
A maintenance employee for Walmart thought he was doing the right thing by handing over a stack of bills totaling $350 that he found discarded in the store’s parking lot. But instead of being thanked for his honesty, the man says he was fired because he waited 30 minutes before handing over the cash. [More]
Walmart Shoppers Surprised To See Flock Of Snacking Birds Camped Out In Store’s Meat Section
By 12.1.15
Of all the places one would expect to see a flock of birds settled down for a group snack, the meat display at your local grocery store is probably pretty far down on the list. To that end, Walmart shoppers in Massachusetts were understandably surprised over the weekend, when at least two customers snapped video footage of a group of live fowl pecking away at packages of red meat. [More]
Celery Supplier Linked To Costco Chicken Salad E. Coli Outbreak Issues Recalls Affecting 13 More Retailers
By 12.1.15
The E. Coli outbreak linked to a rotisserie chicken salad sold by Costco that’s sickened 19 customers in seven states has been traced back to a single ingredient: celery that comes from a supplier in California. That farm has now issued a recall for a slew of products that could contain tainted celery sold at 13 additional retailers across the country. [More]
Wells Fargo’s High-Pressure Sales Strategy Probed By Federal Regulators
By 11.30.15 — Updated: 9.30.16
Six months after the Los Angeles City Attorney filed a lawsuit accusing Wells Fargo of a slew of unfair practices — like encouraging employees to open unauthorized consumer accounts and then charging those accounts phony fees to meet sales expectations — two other regulatory agencies have opened investigations into the bank’s behavior. [More]
Amazon Prime May Soon Be Portal For Other Streaming Video Services
By 11.30.15
After a few years of deconstructing video entertainment into dozens of individual streaming sites, we’re beginning to see a trend toward re-bundling of those services. Hulu sells access to Showtime, Sling TV offers streaming HBO, and now a new report claims that Amazon Prime will soon be offering one-stop shopping for other streaming video companies. [More]
Target Website Crashes, Spoiling Shoppers’ Cyber Monday
By 11.30.15
Savvy holiday shoppers who didn’t want to fight the crowds on Black Friday may still be battling congested online traffic in order to obtain the plethora of Cyber Monday deals today. That’s especially true if you’re trying to score some goodies from Target, as the retailer’s website crashed this morning. [More]
Amazon Shows Off Latest Prime Air Delivery Drone Prototype In New Video
By 11.30.15
Two years after Amazon debuted its delivery drone to the masses, the e-commerce giant is back with a new demo video showing the company’s latest prototype for its Prime Air unmanned aerial vehicle. [More]
