A provision buried deep within the recently passed Wall Street reform bill has the power to finally kill off mandatory binding arbitration, one of the more dangerous anti-consumer practices still sanctioned by law. While the bill includes a limited provision banishing arbitration agreements from mortgages and home equity loans, it also gives broad powers to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to kill off arbitration in all other consumer financial products. [More]
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Credit Unions Ask Customers To Leave
By 3.16.10
Credit unions might be attractive alternatives to big commercial banks, but they’re not crisis-proof. OregonLive says about a fifth of the nation’s credit unions are having financial troubles right now. To get in better financial health, they’re introducing fees for services that have long been free, and even asking members to move their deposits to other institutions. [More]
Move Over Museum Curators, Bank Of America Wants Your Job
By 8.26.09
Cash-strapped art museums across the country are turning to an unlikely source for new exhibitions: Banks. According to a story in the New York Times, Bank of America, Chase, and a number of other global entities have put together traveling art exhibits and are offering them to museums across the country.
Circuit City Sure Had A Lot Of Optimism Near The End
By 8.20.09
Check out these ridiculous corporate propaganda films from poor, sweet Circuit City, back when it was still struggling to differentiate itself from Best Buy in some way other than “worse.”
Can't Cancel Weight Watchers Online Membership? Here's Help
By 5.22.09
Are you having trouble canceling your online Weight Watchers membership? If the normal online cancellation channels don’t work, try this number. Remember, like all contact information provided on this site, it is to be used for good, not evil, and only when all other options don’t work.
REI Says ATM Photographer Is Welcome In Their Store Any Time
By 5.15.09
REI’s Director of Corporate Communications contacted us with an official statement about the recent showdown between two Loomis security guards and a customer with an iPhone at one of their Seattle stores. She says despite the document Shane says he was forced to sign at the police station, he is not banned from their stores. Below is REI’s official statement.
Forced Arbitration: As Fair As A Sucker Punch
By 4.27.09
We at Consumerist really hate mandatory binding arbitration, the faux-legal sucker punch that companies deliver when they screw up and you try to sue, and so should you. We’ve talked about its evils a lot, but no one can describe this legal abomination as well as the victims themselves, so this week we’ll let them speak.
Polite Letter Gets Bank Of America To Refund Overdraft Fees
By 5.15.08
Jenn’s checking account with Bank of America recently had a policy change designed to increase overdraft fees, and it worked: sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning she was hit with 6 NSF charges going back the previous 48 hours, because she was about 15 minutes late transferring funds into her account the day before. Technically she had broken the new policy, but Jenn hadn’t realized or remembered that there was a policy change and she was taken by surprise. She decided to try to reason with BoA’s corporate office about the fees, and explain why she thought they were unfair.
Best Buy Trained MePossibly Trained Other Employees I Heard About To Commit Credit Card Fraud, And 4 More Bad Things
By 5.13.08
A commenter to our Worst Company in America nominations picked Best Buy, his employer of six years, to win it all. His reasons, including the credit card fraud, phony bundling scams, and other schemes they made him do to keep his job he heard rumors about happening at other Best Buys, inside. UPDATE: The original commenter has contacted us to say that these things did not actually happen to him and he was not trained to do them by Best Buy. Rather, he heard about them happening at other Best Buys or read about them in other Consumerist articles, and, in a pique of anger, wrote a long comment that remixed all this information together and framed it as if it happened to him. Consumerist regrets the error, and the commenter has been banned.
Do You Know What Grade Of Beef Taco Bell Uses? Do They? Does Anyone?
By 5.8.08
A reader sent us the contents of a Better Business Bureau complaint filed against Taco Bell. It describes how a customer tried repeatedly to find out what grade beef Taco Bell uses in its food, and how nobody at the company was able or willing to provide an answer. Not surprisingly, the BBB complaint also went unanswered. Let’s just hope they’re not sourcing their beef from forklift cattle, which is like downer cattle but has odd prong-shaped bruises on the side.
Dunkin' Donuts Suing Its Own Small Franchisees Out Of Existence
By 5.1.08
If your favorite Dunkin’ Donuts shop is an…
Former Sprint CSR Tells All
By 3.31.08
A man who worked on the front line of Sprint’s customer service department sent us some dirt on what goes on over there, including officially designated fake supervisors, obnoxious personal notes left in your account from your last call, and credit quotas of about $2.50 per call. “I was once punished by a Supervisor and written up because I was giving too many courtesy credits. Apparently Sprint doesn’t feel that being transferred 7 times and then hung up on is worth $10 in return.”
Best Buy Refuses To Honor 2 for $25 DVD Sale
By 1.26.08
Silly Jason. He thought a Best Buy sign reading “2 for $25” meant he could buy two DVDs for $25. He obviously didn’t read the part of the sign that requires customers to buy Saw IV.
Ernst & Young’s Super Awesome Motivational Video
By 1.6.07
It shows some kind of American cabaret singer leading a group of E&Y employees in a ballrooms singalong.
EXCLUSIVE: Costco To Make Return Policy Stricter?
By 12.9.06
Costco is making its liberal return policies stricter, according to a little birdy. Previously, you could return anything, except computers, at anytime, with or without a receipt.
No More Drug Company Pens For Stanford Doctors
By 9.14.06
In order to combat the perception of undue corporate influence upon doctors, Stanford University is banning its hospitals from receiving all gifts from drug company reps. Effective October 1st, everything from pens to coffee cups to catered lunches are verboten.
Exclusive: Time Warner Dissolves Houston Division of Texas-Kansas City Cable Partners
By 8.2.06
We just got sent this internal announcement announcing Houston’s Cable Partners annihilation.
