Hey there. It’s us, your friendly Consumer blog. We know you’d like to cancel your Verizon contract, but it can be a little intimidating… particularly because Verizon doesn’t want to honor the terms of your contract, and you may be afraid of them. That’s sad, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Come with us now as we take a journey to month-to-month bliss. Remember, a contract goes two-ways, regardless of what some companies may think.
how-to
How To: Wash A Cat For Cheap
By 1.9.07
Admittedly, this is a very advanced money saving tip. Only the very seriously broke, or very seriously frugal try to wash their own cat. Some of you might say, “You don’t need to wash a cat.” Hey, maybe you don’t, but there are people out there making a living washing cats.
How To: Tell If Images Were Faked
By 1.9.07 — Updated: 2.27.13
As a skeptical consumer, you’ve probably looked at photo in the news or a piece of advertising and thought, hey, I bet that was faked. Now with a little help from Photoshop, and Tim Mathenson’s tutorial, you can tell.
HOW TO: Move To New York City Sane And Not Broke
By 1.6.07
How do you move to New York City and stay sane and not be broke? [More]
HOW TO: Have Happy Returns
By 1.2.07
The tree is shedding needles and the cheap champagne hangover has faded along with your memory, which means it’s time to think about returning all those crappy gifts you got. Consumer Reports Shopping blog has some tips on making your returns happy:
HOW TO: Donate to Charity
By 12.28.06
It’s the end of the year, so we thought we’d offer some tips on charitable giving. There are only a few days left to donate items before the end of the year. Giving to charity is about more than just saving on your taxes, it’s also about helping a cause that’s important to you. You could save a panda, or cure a disease, or help someone who is hungry. Giving to charity is a way for you to decide where your money goes.
HOW TO Reduce Real Estate Taxes
By 12.28.06
How can you make sure you’re not paying too much real estate tax?
HOW TO: Disable RFID in Your New Passport
By 12.27.06
Despite the fact that RFID chips are not secure and can be read by hackers, any U.S. Passport issued after Jan 1 will contain an RFID chip. If you’d like to risk 25 years in prison for tampering with it, Wired has a primer on how to disable the chip and protect yourself from ID theft.
Tape On Your Wet Cellphone Won’t Help You At All
By 10.18.06
In response to our post on Saving A Wet Cellphone, and specifically the advice we for some reason gave about trying to trick companies to pay for dropping the blasted phone in the sink by taping over the water damage sticker, an anonymous tipster wrote:
How Much To Tip All Those Grubby Bellhops
By 10.16.06
There is a large number of petulant, pouting employees ready to freeze you with an icy shoulder if you don’t pony up a tip. It can be hard trying to figure out just whom social etiquette dictates you tip and whom can safely be ignored.
Kit: Protect Your PC From Viruses for Cheap
By 10.4.06
And there you go: that’s how easy it is to completely brick your newly bought PC. Luckily, it’s just as easy to prevent that from happening. So here’s one for the Consumerist Kit: how to protect your computer from viral scumbags without paying a dime. This is only valid for Windows users, the suckers.
Don’t Get Bilked By IDT Energy
By 9.18.06
We’ve been getting a slew of complaints recently about consumers bilked by IDT Energy into signing up for vastly inflated new electricity contracts. Worse yet, IDT will often claim to be agents of your real energy provider.
Even More Ways To Actually Use Your Miles
By 8.4.06
Our buddy Mark over at Upgrade Travel was a great help to us when we put together our recent How-To: Actually Use Your Frequent Flyer Miles.
HOW-TO: Avoid Gelatinated Pedestrians, Make Your Own Air Conditioner
By 6.19.06
Speaking of childish encounters with swarms of insects, I also have a wonderful story about trying to prevent a one hundred pound air conditioner from plummeting out of the window down upon the hunched spine of my aged mother as a hive of wasps inserted their spiny protuberances into every pore of my face. Unfortunately, the full details of this epic tale of boy vs. air conditioner vs. a million angry wasps would far exceed Gawker’s newly instituted post character maximum limit.
How To Get A Support Ticket From HP
By 6.7.06
While Ben continues to burst aneurysms out of his skin like tiny out-of-control fire hoses in his efforts to cancel his MySpace account, here’s a reminder that impenetrably convoluted instructions to get support aren’t limited to community websites aimed primarily at Popken and his sulky teenage emo girl peer group.
Reminder: Anyone Can Be A Commenter
Just a friendly reminder: every reader can and should become a Consumerist commenter. The bar to entry is just insanely low: have a somewhat sane point, don’t type in all capital letters, and follow the process below…