Westerners are stuck paying $3 billion to energy companies that colluded to gang-rape the free market. California, Washington, and Nevada were planning to return the money to customers, but the Supreme Court recently ruled that the industry manipulated the market, fair and square.
consumers
Hey, We've Got The Lowest Consumer Confidence Since The First Bush Administration!
By 6.24.08
Consumers are hurting these days and they haven’t hurt this bad since Papa Bush was in office way back in 1992.
It's Official: Early Adopters Are Jackasses
By 6.19.08
A new study by Mindset Media and Nielsen Online has created a better profile of gadget lovers who tend to buy new technology early and often—and it’s no longer believed that they’re just “wealthy young males.” Instead, the early adopter type tends to score high in leadership and assertiveness, but low in modesty.
Cable: The Worst Deal Of The Decade
By 5.24.08
The price of everything in the telecom world has fallen over the past decade, except for cable. Cable is now 77% more expensive than it was ten years ago, an increase that dwarfs the rate of inflation and makes telecom executives salivate. The Times looks with pity on all of us who splay our wallets wide for the industry, and asks if there’s any salvation other than à la carte pricing.
Consumers Finally Allowed To Speak Out Against Abusive Credit Card Practices
By 4.19.08
Consumers were finally allowed this week to testify in favor of a proposed Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights without being forced to sign waivers allowing their creditors to release private financial records to the public. The three cardholders who testified lambasted their credit card companies for penalizing them even though they abided by their cardholder agreements.
Credit Card Expert Disputes Erroneous Charge, Frustration Ensues
By 3.29.08
Georgetown law professor and Credit Slips blogger Adam Levitin is having trouble disputing an erroneous $176.96 charge on his Citibank Amex card from PACER, the federal court’s online docket system, which he accesses for free. The professor is a consumer credit expert and should have no problem understanding and fixing the error, right? Fat chance.
Citigroup Developing Citi-Branded Phone That Can Make Contactless Payments
By 3.28.08
Do you wish you had a way to spend your money more easily, without all that opening-the-wallet or punching-the-pin-number manual labor? The trade publication Cards & Payments (registration required) says that it’s received a copy of a report filed with the FCC that indicates Citigroup is developing a Near Field Communication, or NFC, mobile phone that would allow its customers to make contactless payments at participating retailers.
New Report Says FCC Fails At Tracking Customer Complaints
By 3.14.08
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report yesterday that says that while the FCC processes about 95% of the complaints that come in, it takes some sort of enforcement action in only about 9% of them. “The GAO said it was unable to determine why the [other] investigations were closed without action because ‘FCC does not systematically collect these data.'” The FCC uses five separate databases and “about 46,000 paper files” to track complaints, and the GAO said “made it difficult to get answers to basic questions like how long it takes the agency to close an investigation and the total dollar amount it assesses in fines.”
BusinessWeek: "Consumers Are Fighting Back"
By 2.22.08
BusinessWeek’s cover story from their March 3rd issue, “Consumer Vigilantes,” looks at last year’s wave of stories about consumers who took matters into their own hands, either by smashing up a Comcast office with a hammer, starting a “Comcast must die” blog, or sending EECBs to unsuspecting executives. “Frustrated by the usual fix-it options–obediently waiting on hold with Bangalore, gamely chatting online with a scripted robot–more consumers are rebelling against company-prescribed service channels,” BusinessWeek writes. What we can’t figure out is how they got those three guys to actually pose with those goofy masks on—sometimes it’s okay to say no to the photographer.
U.S. News: It's Your Own Damn Fault You Can't Redeem Rebates
By 1.27.08
U.S. News & World Report hates our inability to redeem rebates. If we only tried harder, they say, we might be able to conquer our “tendency to procrastinate and inability to follow multistep directions.” Yes, that must be the problem.
Nobody Knows The True Cost Of Credit
By 12.31.07
Credit card companies make it impossible for consumers or markets to know the true cost of credit, according to Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin. The professor makes his point with a pop quiz:
… what’s the interest rate on the credit cards you’re carrying? How about the default rate? Do you know what constitutes an event of default? What will trigger a penalty fee or surcharge? How much are those fees? If you’re like most Americans, you probably cannot answer many or all of these questions.
FDA Is So Underfunded It Can't Protect Consumers
By 12.3.07
Today, an advisory panel to the FDA will present its findings developed over the past year. The result is “a scathing review of the state of the FDA” that says it’s “so underfunded and understaffed that it’s putting U.S. consumers at risk in terms of food and drug safety.”
Consumer Testing Spurs Toy Recalls
By 12.2.07
The Times brings us the story of vigilant consumers who successfully drove regulatory agencies to yank dangerous toys from store shelves. We have argued, along with the CPSC, that consumer testing is an utter waste of time, but consumers who are willing to bring their suspicious toys to a professional lab are able to have a surprising impact.
Verizon To Go GSM
By 12.2.07
Verizon’s next generation of devices will run on the GSM network that will be used by AT&T and T-Mobile, meaning that in a few years, customers with unlocked phones will be able to move between the three providers without purchasing new equipment. Verizon currently uses a CDMA network along with Sprint, but last week announced that it would use the GSM-protocol LTE (Long Term Evolution) for their fourth-generation data services. Note, Verizon’s LTE phones will not be backwards-compatible with the current GSM networks run by AT&T and T-Mobile. Both are expected to support LTE. And don’t expect to see the new phones anytime soon…
Finding Legal Lucre In Identity Theft
By 11.18.07
A slate of companies legitimately profit from identity theft by offering services that the three credit reporting agencies refuse to make easily accessible to consumers. The Times brings us the stories of three such companies that are sucking the venture capital teat all the way to market:
Walmart Fined $89,705 For Overcharging Wisconsin Customers
By 11.10.07
Walmart received an $89,705 fine after the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection found 280 weights and measures violations at nine Walmart stores. The gargantuan retailer failed to subtract the weight of packaging materials, or “tare weight,” when pricing bulk items like coffee, broccoli, and sweet potatoes.
Judy Cardin, section chief for weights and measures with the state, said that in the case of bulk coffee, the weight of the packaging materials was included when the price of the product was determined. The state had tested one-pound bags of Cameron brand coffee beans, which were found to be 3/100ths of a pound over the actual bagged content.
Sorry, Your House Isn't An ATM Anymore
By 11.8.07
For years homeowners have been using their soaring-in-value homes as ATMs, drawing money out to finance whatever they wanted. No more. Falling home prices mean that your house is no longer a source of cash.
