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As if you needed a reason not to wear Crocs, here’s another story of a kid whose foot got caught in an escalator while wearing the damn things. The kid was fine, the escalator was repaired, the bottom of the Croc is chewed up, and “Crocs stands by its design.” [CBS5.com]
12-year-old Megan Templeton was shopping with her father for some watermelons and hamburgers for their Memorial Day cook-out when she was stung by a stowaway scorpion that had made a home in the produce section of her local Walmart.
Amazon.com apparently has a glitch whereby if you have 1-click ordering set up to buy MP3 downloads, and you forget that you canceled your credit card because it had been stolen by a random French person, you’ll end up with a bunch of “free music.” And, if you’re an honest person like Jeff Somogyi, when you try to contact Amazon to pay for the music, they’ll chuckle at you.
A Dallas court found U-Haul guilty of negligence for failing to maintain its vehicles properly, and awarded 74-year-old Talmadge Waldrip $84 million in damages, $63 million of which are punitive. “The truck’s parking brake did not work at all,” said the man’s lawyer. “He stepped out of the truck and it rolled right over him.”
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We hear a lot of horror stories about bad satellite TV installers, but they do serve an important function in the world. If one had been available to this gentlemen he might not have shot his wife. [KSDK]
THE QUOTE:In a statement, the TSA said that the agency and “Federal Air Marshals Service take this matter seriously and it is receiving immediate attention.”
A fire broke out in a Best Buy in Quincy, Illinois, over the weekend, and although the sprinkler system put it out promptly, it flooded the entire store in an inch and a half of water. The store manager told the local news station that it would take a few days to clean up and restock inventory—but we prefer to imagine that there’s going to be an awful lot of CompUSA-style “AS IS” deals in the Quincy Best Buy very soon.
A 44-year-old Brooklyn woman was returning from vacation in Haiti when she began to have trouble breathing. According to her cousin who was on the flight with her, she was refused help twice by the flight attendant, then she was brought two oxygen tanks with masks—but both were empty. Her cousin requested an emergency landing, but before they could touch down in Miami she was dead, so the plane continued to JFK. The airline isn’t commenting on why the emergency tanks were empty in the first place. “After the flight attendant refused to administer oxygen to Ms. Desir, she became distressed, pleading, ‘Don’t let me die,’ Mr. Oliver recalled.”
Courtney Prebich, a MWAA spokeswoman, said that the two planes — a U.S. Airways Airbus A319 headed to LaGuardia Airport and a smaller U.S. Airways Express regional jet on the way to Rochester, N.Y. — were in an area at the north side of the airport waiting for their turn at the runway when the collision occurred.
Update: Dancing Deer apologized.
Reader Robert used the Consumerist’s Ultimate Guide To Fighting Back to get an $856 refund from another driver’s insurance company.
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!
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After a 7-year-old riding a bike collided with a van, he got a bill from a collections agency for $650. After the local news team got involved, the company said they were dropping the matter as “it wasn’t their policy to send notices to little 7-year-olds.” They’re also giving him $100 for a new bike. Aw. [KPHO]
Nancy Nord and the CPSC have published what might the densest collection of common sense “advice” we’ve ever seen: the “2008 Holiday Decoration Safety Tips” brochure, which you can download here if you need to. Among their tips: buy fire-resistant or non-flammable items whenever possible, don’t leave candles unattended, and don’t overwhelm the CPSC with “too much” power.
“While moving to our new house last week a friend who was helping us accidentally spilt beer on my son’s DS lite and it stopped working. I knew that his DS was still under warranty, but I also knew that I would not cover physical damage caused by neglect. After checking Nintendo’s website, and confirming that spilling liquid on it would not be covered and that I would have to pay for the repair.”
UPDATE: Here is the full video of the incident (32 MB, ZIP).
People! You are accidentally poisoning yourselves! What the hell? Stop it.
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