Jonathan’s wife ordered some clothes from Banana Republic, and was confused when another, similarly-sized box arrived on their doorstep from Banana Republic a week later. This box was clearly not destined for her, since she had not ordered the exciting new “Open Your Own Banana Republic” playset.
confusing
New Subway Gamepieces Exist Outside Of Normal Time
By 8.25.09
Justin sent us this gamepiece he scraped like a wet scab off the side of his moist Subway beverage cup. (I do not like gamepieces affixed to fast food drinks.) We’re in awe at its nearly k?an-like phrasing. How is an instant win not an instant winner? How do you peel the gamepiece that has already been peeled? Feel free to use these in your meditations.
Delta/Northwest Employees Wear The Same Uniform, Expect You To Be Able To Tell Them Apart
By 7.27.09
Reader Matthew writes in to tell us that Delta at Minneapolis/St. Paul airport is “still in Beta.” The employees all wear the same uniform, but they still work for different airlines — sorta.
Target Still Doing Business In A Reality Vortex
By 7.21.09
Loyal Consumerist readers may have noticed that we haven’t made any recent posts in our widely acclaimed series of posts about how discount retailer Target is insane. Has Target sought help and found its way back to reality? No. We were just saving up material.
ADT: Sign Up Or Thieves Will Kill Your Dogs With Oven Cleaner
By 7.19.09
Leo thought that letting his two dogs greet an approaching ADT salesman would be enough of a hint that he didn’t want their security services. Nope! The well-trained salesman sensitively barked: “You know what they are doing to dogs now, don’t you? They’re spraying oven-cleaner into their face, killing them in 20 seconds!”
How Healthy Is This Juice? Depends If You Speak English Or Spanish
By 7.12.09
Orchida Coconut Juice displays nutrition data in both English and Spanish, but the values aren’t the same. The English nutrition panels claims that the juice has 240 calories and no fat. Apparently, our Spanish-speaking friends are supposed to read that as 150 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. Pictures of the strange panels, inside…
Bank Of America Bans Customer For Life
By 7.6.09
Jesse tried to scam Bank of America. No, wait. He tried to open two accounts at once! No, that’s not right either. He did something wrong, that’s obvious. Isn’t it? Hello? Please tell us what Jesse did wrong, Bank of America. Your lifetime banning confuses us.
Sprint Tech Support Goes To Porn Ad
By 6.24.09
Man’s Blackberry chokes. Man calls Sprint. Sprint says hold. Man gets transferred to porn ad.
Chimichangas Are 20 For $10, Limit 5. What?
By 6.17.09
Reader Len is a little confused. To be honest, so are we.
Why Does The UPS Store Ship Packages With FedEx?
By 6.14.09
Alex shipped two packages to San Francisco from the UPS store in Boston. One was delivered, the other wasn’t—until without any explanation or notification, it arrived back at Alex’s house in Boston on a FedEx truck. Huh?
Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs: Some Assembly Required
By 6.8.09
Jim spotted this confusing sign at a Fry’s store in Campbell, Calif. On a display of compact fluorescent light bulbs, the store helpfully notes that some assembly is required. “Is it safe to assemble your own fluorescent light bulbs?” he wrote. “I mean with the dangerous mercury vapor and all?”
At Food Lion, "Value Pricing" Means Extra Confusion!
By 5.31.09
Food Lion can’t decide how much this boneless New York strip steak costs or weighs. It could weigh .47 pounds at $9.49 per pound, or it could be 1.06 pounds of value priced meat at $6.64 per pound. Reader Mike isn’t sure what’s really going on here, but he’s hungry and confused and wants his steak to come with answers.
Punishing Customers For Buying More: Now Worldwide
By 5.28.09
Theoretically, if you buy more of something, you should pay less per item, or per unit. That’s the entire point of buying things in bulk. Right? Not necessarily. To confuse the logical part of your brain this fine morning, here’s a collection of instances where customers pay more when they buy more.
Don't Worry, This Kool Aid Doesn't Expire Until 01 Feb 11 02 11:48 CH
By 5.11.09
Chad, who sent this in, says he tried to decipher this Kool Aid‘s expiration date using the cheat sheet we posted last December, but nothing on this container matches the code format on the sheet. It can’t be that hard to print an unambiguous human readable expiration date on a product. Who else needs to read the date, other than a human? Why should the average consumer have to worry about deciphering a date? We thought we’d all pretty much agreed on some basic rules for how to keep track of the days.
This Discount Store Enjoys Messing With Its Customers' Minds
By 4.23.09
Shelley just sent us this photo of a store she saw in New Jersey this afternoon. We particularly like that the neon signs in the window are just as contradictory as the roof signs. It’s like a decorating theme.
Meritline Using Misleading "Free HDMI" Cable To Sell Digital TV Converter With No HDMI Output?
By 4.22.09
Matthew emailed us with an interesting link to a Meritline offer that he says is making the rounds on deal sites. The Airlink digital-to-analog converter box is a fairly generic offer, but Meritline is offering a free HDMI cable with it. The only problem is, there’s no place on the box to use the cable. If you just see “free HDMI cable” and don’t read the specs closely, you’ll be in for a rotten surprise when the box arrives. But hey, free cable.
Citibank Won't Accept The Extra Money You Sent To Payoff Your Student Loans
By 3.28.09
We’re all about to see more money in our paychecks thanks to lower payroll taxes, but if you want to use the savings to payoff your student loans, you better act on the one day that Citibank will take your money. At least that’s what Citibank told reader Valori, who tried sending the bank a check with instructions to apply it towards the principal on her student loans. The bank instead applied it to her usual monthly payment and told her that the only way to pay down her principal was to “setup an automatic payment on the Citibank website to debit on the same day as [the] automatic payment is direct debited.” Does that seem easy to anyone?
Metrolink Addresses Confusing Wording Regarding Monthly Passes
By 3.19.09
It looks like someone at Metrolink in Southern California reads The Consumerist, because their communications manager responded today to yesterday’s post about some potentially confusing language on their website. He even posted a suggested revision to the language in an attempt to clear it up, and is asking for reader feedback.
