If there’s one thing we can comfortably count upon, it’s that the policy members of major corporations are geniuses. We’re not kidding. If they’d turned their attentions away from business and finance and to scientific matters, they would already have invented the time machine and I’d be able to experience first-hand what a great kisser I’ll be in ten years. Unfortunately for us all, instead, they exert their ingenuity to figuring out ways to keep us in massive amounts of debt, even after we’ve paid our bills.
credit
Don’t Pay For Your Credit Report
By 9.13.06
This month marks the one year anniversary of Congress granting consumers the right to one free credit report per year. You can get yours at AnnualCreditReport.com. Anyone else, including and especially FreeCreditReport, run by none other than credit reporting company Experian, asking for money, is a ripoff.
Out Damned Spot! Help A Reader Clean His Citibank Credit
By 9.13.06
Ben — a man with perfect credit — needs help. Not Ben Popken, editor of this Mickey Mouse pajama publication. Ben A. — one of our most prolific tipsters.
Tear This Document To Shreds To See Your Wells Fargo Extended Protection Plan
By 9.13.06
Over at This Is Broken, reader Mike wrote in with a scan of an insert in his latest credit card bill from Wells Fargo. “One of those side-tear envelopes where you tear off one side and slide the contents out. The other three sides remain sealed, to ensure that the text printed on the inside of the envelope cover is unreadable.”
Feature: Converting Credit Card Reward Points Into Free Flights
By 8.31.06
An impassioned plea, sent weeks ago to our tips box. A certain level of confused hysteria is evident. “If I have a credit card with reward points, should I convert them into miles? When? How to tell whether I’m getting a good rate? Help!”
The Softer Side of Sears’ Ruthless Debt Collection
By 8.2.06
When you’re out of job and aiming to repay a loan, the chances of you reaching a sympathetic representative is like finding a needle in a pit of jagged, used syringes.
Blogobitchin!
By 7.25.06
• Freezing Conan O’ Brian? Bad customer service we can understand, Comcast, but that’s just vindictive. [Kevin Green]
Portrait of an Idio… Er, Identity Thief
By 7.5.06
Meet Shiva Sharma. Husband, father, identity thief, inmate of the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York. Shiva has no idea how much money he’s stolen from other people, but by the time of his third arrest for identity theft, he’d been nailed in connection with over $150,000 in credit card fraud transaction.
Vincent Ferrari Teaches Us How To Hope Again
By 7.3.06
Our good friend Vincent Ferrari — the shameless self-promoter who recorded the AOL Cancellation call, tipped us, then tipped everyone else on the Internet before we could even get Boing Boinged (but we totally adore him anyway) — sent us word that he’s done a few more cancellation calls, this time for credit cards, with far better results. And by better results, we mean worse from the perspective of pure entertainment. But good service is what matters, right?
Gaming Frequent Flyer Miles From Your Credit Card
By 6.23.06
Making a luxury purchase like a new car, a Nokia bling-phone, a face lift, a funeral, a blackmarket baby? Why not charge it to your airline-branded credit card and get yourself some free miles to boot?
Hey Consumerists! Get Blacklisted By The Chargeback Bureau!
By 6.16.06
Welcome to the consumerist blacklist, Dalton Trumbo!
Help Save Screech’s House!
By 6.15.06
Unbelievably, there’s only so long you can draw out a career as a throat gobbling doofus in Hollywood. So it’s to Dustin Diamond’s credit that he somehow managed to stretch what should have been a two year stint as ‘Screech’ on Saturday Morning television into a career that spanned two decades. The man became the definitive television doofus in the minds of many Americans, a favorite subject of drunken conversations about what child actors had most likely gone on to become gay porn stars.
Scammers Won’t Accept Credit Cards
By 6.6.06
These days, when I want to use my credit card, it isn’t enough to just sign the slip and be done with it. I have to sign the slip. Then I have to show some ID. Then I have to stand stock still as a clerk scrutinizes my face. And then I have to type in an arbitrary 5 digit pin number. Only then will Mastercard be convinced that I am not some brown-toothed Russian lottery scammer.
