While it’s not entirely unheard of to see prices listed in euros stateside, a new federal class action lawsuit claims that retailer Zara’s practice of doing so — and allegedly making up its own exchange rate — has tricked shoppers into paying more than they should. [More]
math is hard
Lawsuit: Zara Misleads Customers By Listing Prices In Euros, Making Its Own Exchange Rate
By 8.23.16
Sprint Exec Admits That “Half-Off” Offer Will Likely Only Result In Savings Of Around 20%
By 12.5.14
Earlier this week, Sprint introduced a new offer for current Verizon and AT&T customers looking to switch service — same amount of data at half the price. We noted at the time that the major catch to this deal is that you have to pay full price for your new phone when you switch (or pay $200), but how much would that cut into your savings? According to one top Sprint exec, quite a lot. [More]
Verizon Realizes 2 Years And 12 Months Are Not The Same Thing
By 6.26.14
Months after Chromebook Pixel owners began complaining that they had been shortchanged on the free Verizon Wireless data that was supposed to be included in the purchase price of their laptops, and days after national news reports called out Big V for its failure to understand how calendars and contracts work, the company has finally admitted that it screwed up and will be doing something vaguely nice to make up for it. [More]
Google Makes Up For Verizon’s Bad Math, Offers $150 To Screwed-Over Chromebook Owners
By 6.25.14
Earlier this week, the mathletes at Verizon were caught once again making up their own rules about the meaning of the quantity “2 years.” People who had bought Chromebook Pixel laptops under the illusion that the promised two years of free 100MB/month of wireless data were suddenly finding out that Verizon was only giving them one year. So far, Verizon hasn’t explained its idiocy, leaving the Chromebook’s maker, Google, to do damage control. [More]
Groupon’s “Salebration” Leads To Confused, Voucherless Customers
By 3.28.14
Groupon is running a shady deal, readers told us. They recently sent a 20% off coupon code to customers, promising 20% off a local deal. Neat. Jenny nabbed three $12 vouchers for a local store, spending only $18. Yet her 20% coupon only got her a discount of $1.20. She was disappointed that it was only taking ten percent off, and complained to Groupon and to us. The deal, it turns out, wasn’t shady at all. [More]
MPAA Says It Has No Way Of Measuring The Damage From Piracy (But Wants Damages Anyway)
By 10.17.13
If you read stories about movie piracy, you’ll hear the industry throw around some very specific numbers about how much money is lost to pirates by the U.S. movie business every year, but when it comes time to actually detail those damages in court, the MPAA says actual piracy damages “are not capable of meaningful measurement.” [More]
The Children’s Place Shirt: Don’t Worry If You Aren’t Good At Math — There’s Always Shopping
By 8.5.13 — Updated: 8.9.13
We understand that there are plenty of demands on a little girl’s time, and that she can’t possibly be expected to excel at every subject in the school of life. But hey, according to The Children’s Place (henceforth to be referred to as TCP), it’s okay because her best subjects of Shopping, Music and Dancing are all covered. As for math? Nobody’s perfect, so don’t worry about checking off that subject. [More]
Ricky’s, Where A “Free” Travel-Size Shampoo Will Cost You $7
By 3.1.13
Earlier today, Consumerist reader Steve popped into Ricky’s — a chain of stores in NYC — to pick up some of his usual pomade. On the shelf, he saw what initially appears to be a good deal — a free travel-size shampoo with the purchase of a tin of pomade. But something struck Steve as being off about this deal. [More]
Lands’ End Reminds Females They Are Supposed To Be Bad At Math
By 7.19.12
If you’re a school-age female who is breezing through your math lessons, the folks at the Lands’ End catalog would like to remind you that your lack of a Y chromosome apparently means you should be struggling to keep up in the class. [More]
Big Businesses Admit Being Really Bad At Math… When It Comes To How Much A CEO Earns
By 6.27.12
In March, a group of two dozen lawmakers prodded the Securities & Exchange Commission to finally get around to enforcing Section 953(b) of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which requires publicly traded companies to disclose the ration between CEO pay and the median pay for the rest of their employees. Now that the SEC is prepping to release those rules, these companies are suddenly claiming a lack of basic math skills. [More]
Why The Math On Your Soda Bottles & Cans Doesn’t Always Add Up
By 6.15.12 — Updated: 6.3.14
In the two years since we first covered the complicated rounding involved with soda bottle nutrition labels, some changes have been made with the goal of clearing up things like calorie count and serving size. But some questions still keep popping up, so it’s probably time for a refresher course. [More]
Time Warner Cable Offers $99 Wideband Service, But I Can Only Get It By Paying $109
By 4.3.12
After seven years of subscribing to Time Warner Cable’s broadband internet service, Consumerist reader Matt saw that TWC was offering upgrades to its wideband service for the tempting price of $99 per month… well, sort of. [More]
Walmart Continues To Short-Change Customers On Gift Receipts
By 11.23.11
It’s been six months since reporters in California first caught several Walmart stores offering insufficient refunds on items returned with gift receipts. And then they confirmed two months ago that it was still going at Walmart’s across the country. In spite of all this evidence that the nation’s largest retailer needs to fix its gift receipt system, customers are still being screwed over when they try to return a gift. [More]
This Texas Instruments Calculator Can't Calculate Correctly
By 9.29.11
There’s a basic assumption that consumers have about calculators: that you put numbers in, and the calculator spits answers out. Correct answers. Accurate answers. In the case of the Texas Instruments scientific calculator that John bought recently, he tells Consumerist that this is a false assumption. As false as the answers it gave him for the area of a circle. [More]
Old Navy Promises Me $100 In Merchandise, Falls Short
By 7.11.11
Something’s rotten in the state Denmark and by Denmark, we actually mean Old Navy. Customer Christine says she bought into a grab bag deal advertised by the clothiers for a $20 bag with $100-$125 worth of marked down merchandise. The purported markdown value, she says, was to be $40-45. But that’s not what she got. [More]
Chase Screws Up Loan Modification, "Fixes" Error By Adding $8,000 To Balance Of Loan
By 6.2.11
The folks at ProPublica recently looked into the all-too-common problem of homeowners who thought they had successfully run through the loan modification gauntlet only to later find out that their bank had no record of the reduction and their house was suddenly in foreclosure. [More]
Why Don’t The Calories On This Mountain Dew Bottle Add Up?
By 12.7.10 — Updated: 6.3.14
Eagle-eyed reader Brian was sitting back and enjoying an ice-cold Mountain Dew when he noticed that something seemed funny about the math on the Nutrition Facts label. [More]
Walmart: Where 'Rollback' Actually Means 'Price Increase'
By 11.15.10
How does Walmart stay profitable when they’re always announcing “rollbacks” on the prices of the stuff it sells? Judging by this photo, they do it by actually increasing the price. [More]
