For Jewish Consumerists, the high holy days are nigh, and the expense may be greater than ever.
mark ashley
Air Canada Bills Passenger for Delaying Flight
By 9.22.06
Gus Fuentes is being billed $1,350 (Canadian) for being an ass onboard an Air Canada jet, before it took off from London for Toronto. His antics caused him to be kicked off the plane, and the airline sent him a bill for causing the flight to be delayed. While he vows to fight the Man and not pay, the Canadian Transportation Agency has already ruled that the airline was within its rights when it sent Gus the bill.
WalMart Slashes Generic Prescription Prices
By 9.22.06
WalMart’s bouncing smiley face just danced up and down on top of your local CVS. Once the roof caved, he moved over to Walgreens, where the body count is pending. RiteAid is next. Cower in fear.
Helium Shortage Makes Clowns Cry on the Inside
By 9.22.06
Pity the clowning industry. Thanks to a global helium shortage, helium balloons, mainstay of spoiled children’s birthday parties, will be hard to come by in coming weeks.
SimonCells Ship This! Ship This! Ship This!
By 9.22.06
Reader Andrea can’t catch an break in her efforts to store electrons for her wireless telecommunications needs, and she’s looking for vengeance. Or at least a battery, and a refund for the expedited shipping she actually paid for.
Hooray for the Plane Ticket Status Quo
By 9.21.06
Airfares aren’t exactly transparent. You’ll see an advertised fare, and then the taxes and fees get added in, and your fare has gone up by twenty to forty dollars, or more if you’re traveling abroad. It feels dirty, like dealing with a car dealership that keeps tallying extra expenses. Consider charges like the TSA security fee the aviation equivalent of floor mats and rustproofing.
Anger God by Eating Foie Gras
By 9.20.06
Chicago’s city council drew praise from some quarters, ridicule from others, when it passed a law making foie gras, the enlarged liver of a force-fed goose or duck, illegal. Better yet, the enforcement mechanism of citizen’s arrest was reminiscent of a culinary Charles Bronson movie.
The Geography of Usury
By 9.20.06
If you’ve ever wondered why your credit card bills are postmarked in Utah, Delaware, Virginia, or South Dakota, and why your interest rates are higher than you think should be legal, the map above might help.
Circuit City Removes Walls and Running Water for Call Center Workers
By 9.20.06
Reader Kelly drops a dime on Circuit City, whose call center will be moving, presumably to reduce expenses. The new location won’t have dividers between desks or running water on Sundays.
Another Laptop Recall, Thanks to Sony Batteries
By 9.20.06
Dell, Apple, and IBM laptops have been catching fire, creating new forms of airport entertainment and providing golden material for bloggers worldwide. Today, we move beyond the Flammable Three, thanks to Toshiba. The company is recalling 340,000 laptop batteries.
Frontier Airlines’ Call Centers Speak American
By 9.19.06
Frontier Airlines won’t route your call thousands of miles farther than they fly, like sending the call to the Phillippines when you’re trying to buy a ticket from Denver to Albuquerque. Among airlines, they’re an exception, as more and more companies are closing U.S.-based call centers.
Bank of America’s Fraud Department Takes a Holiday
By 9.19.06
Reader Jessica is clearly a red-blooded American. She demands service, and above all, LABOR, from her fellow countrymen and -women, even on national holidays, especially on Labor Day.
IBM Joins the Heat Miser Society for Mobile Computing
By 9.19.06
Fresh on the heels of the growing ban on battery-powered inflight use of Apple and Dell laptops: Add IBM to the list of spontaneously combustible mobile adding machines.
