Millions upon millions of seamless commercial transactions — interactions between consumers and business — take place every day. But sometimes, something goes wrong. Your package arrived broken. You’ve been billed for a service you cancelled three months ago. You were called something rude by an employee. Whatever it is, it’s a problem, and you need to complain about it. [More]
how to
A Legitimate Car Seller Will Not Ask For Payment In Amazon Gift Cards
By 5.27.15
As gift cards go, Amazon gift cards are pretty flexible: they’re available in any amount and can be used for a wide variety of merchandise. You can even use them to buy imaginary cars. At least, that’s what happened to a Michigan man who thought that he was buying a car that was in Montana, but was in fact sending four thousand bucks into a scamtastic void. [More]
This Is The Best Video Of A Guy Using A Power Tool To Eat A Bagel That You’ll See Today
By 3.3.15
True: There are other ways to perform common, everyday actions apart from widely accepted methods. False: All of these are brilliant and deserve the description of “mind-blowing.” But though it won’t change everything you ever thought you knew about breakfast, it is fun to see a guy use power tools on a bagel. [More]
Cut Your Regular Expenses With A Bill Haggle Day
By 7.29.14
Here’s an interesting money-saving idea that might not take you too long. Set aside a day and declare it Bill Haggle Day. What’s that? it’s the day when you look over your recurring expenses that you aren’t interested in canceling, and try to negotiate better deals for the same service. [More]
How To Cut A Round Cake So The Leftovers Won’t Dry Out
By 6.20.14
On the occasions when you are allowed to have your cake and eat it too (which I never understood because of course if you own a cake, you should eat it, otherwise what’s the point in having it?) and don’t manage to serve it all up in one sitting, you might stow the leftovers in the refrigerator. But if it’s a round cake, those two exposed cuts can leave the cake dry and stale after a night spent uneaten. WHAT TO DO? [More]
Quit Wasting Money On Internet Impulse Purchases
By 4.28.14
The Internet has brought an amazing array of merchandise into our lives and onto our doorsteps. However, being able to order a crate of hamburger-shaped cookies from Japan or a complete DVD box set of “Friends” episodes at 3 A.M. during a spell of insomnia isn’t always a good thing. Especially when you’re trying to eliminate debt and/or cut down on spending. [More]
A Telemarketer Explains How To Banish Telemarketers
By 3.11.14
If you’ve signed up for the Do Not Call List, you shouldn’t get phone solicitations except from companies you do business with and charitable organizations. If you’re getting calls from a group you aren’t interested in sending money to, or you just don’t like making donations over the phone, they’re just as annoying as commercial calls. [More]
Forget Heart-Shaped Pizza: Try Heart-Shaped Pepperoni Instead
By 2.14.14
In recent weeks, we’ve noticed a lot of visitors coming to our site because they’re looking for information on heart-shaped pizza. Yes, chain pizza places like Papa Murphy’s and Papa John’s offer heart-shaped pizzas, and you can make your own by shaping the crust into a blobbular heart-ish thing. For the ultimate in adorableness, though, try heart-shaped pepperoni. They’ll keep their shape better than a whole pizza, filling the space with way more hearts. [More]
Don’t Order Last-Minute Flowers: Make Chocolate-Dipped Bacon Roses
By 2.13.14
Maybe your planned flower delivery is delayed. Maybe the nasty weather has you stranded at home and unable to head outside to shop for gifts to mark the holiday. Or maybe you have a package of bacon and some toothpicks sitting around the house and some time to kill. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need a justification to make bacon roses. You don’t even need a holiday. [More]
Make Your Own Candy Sprinkles At Home
By 2.7.14
I’m not a fan of candy sprinkles: to me, they taste like wax-covered blah. Are people like me consigned to a dull-sprinkle-free existence, though? No! Using a few simple ingredients, a pastry bag, and your choice of flavors, it’s possible to make your own sprinkles at home. [More]
Hold Your Burger This Way To Keep Toppings From Squirting Out When You Bite Into It
By 1.31.14
The World Wide Web is a valuable thing, indeed. Without it, how would we know that all the rules we’ve learned about eating hamburgers have been wrong, so wrong? Now we know, and from this moment on, you can save those delicious burger fixings from squirting unceremoniously out the back when you take a bite. [More]
Citrus Fruits: You Are Zesting Them Wrong
By 12.18.13
Drop that lemon or lime or other citrus fruit! When you treat it like cheese to be grated, you’re abusing it, making it bitter and not as prime of an ingredient for your holiday recipes. When it calls for a little grated lemon peel or a bit of orange zest, that’s not the time to go crazy with grater. Subtlety, friends. Subtlety. [More]
Tell Me How To… Join A Gym
By 11.7.13
Our own expertise is limited, but the knowledge and experience of the Consumerist community is unlimited. That’s why we’re turning to you, the Consumerist Hivemind, to provide guidance and help solve readers’ problems. Today’s question: how does the wise consumer choose and join a gym while getting the best deal and avoiding shady practices? [More]
Some Non-Wacky Tips That Make Doing Laundry Faster And Easier
By 5.10.13
There are two kinds of household tips that people share on sites like Pinterest: tips that are so simple and useful that you’re amazed that your mother never taught them to you, and tips that are the product of a person with a magazine deadline and a half-baked idea. [More]
Can’t Find Executives’ Names For An EECB? Use LinkedIn
By 4.5.13 — Updated: 12.3.13
Since we published our original guide to launching an executive e-mail carpet bomb in 2007, one thing has changed: social media has become a lot more ubiquitous for people who aren’t currently enrolled in college. Reader Tiana recently had the same problem over and over with an item that she bought at a regional jewelry chain, and got it resolved by contacting some higher-ups. It’s how she figured out who to write to that’s worth filing away in the consumer toolkit in your brain. [More]
4 Things You Can Do Right Now To Save A Ton Of Money
By 2.25.13
Most of our posts discuss the ways that people spend money and things that they’ve spent their money on: discount shopping, paying bills, banking, full-body lattes, and so on. Ways to save money lead to much less interesting headlines, but are a key way to slim down your budget. Or to save up for a fun new gadget. We don’t judge. [More]
The Secretly Awesome Design Of The Ordinary Tic-Tac Box
By 8.28.12
We roll our eyes at instructions on totally mundane objects. “I’m an adult,” a hypothetical person might say. “I know how to strike a match.” Or inflate a balloon. Or apply shampoo to my head. Maybe the ordinary person isn’t as smart as we’d like to think, though. There are millions of boxes of Tic-Tacs circulating out there right this minute, but most people have no idea how to actually dispense the tiny torpedoes of freshness. [More]
