Some Knoxville, TN, residents are fuming mad at a local chain restaurant after seeing that their debit and credit cards have been charged 1,000 times what they should have been for their meals, leaving people in the red for anywhere from $8,000 to $99,000. [More]
mistakes
Staples Offers 99 Cent Stamp With Free Shipping, Wants $10 Shipping After Orders Go Through
By 1.30.13
Oops. Staples offered a great deal on self-inking address stamps that seemed too good to be true: 99 cents for a stamp, with free shipping. By the time the transactions went through, the deal actually was too good to be true, making deal-hunters sad and upset with Staples. [More]
My Mom Ordered One iPad And Best Buy Sent Five
By 12.5.12 — Updated: 12.8.12
Alexa’s boyfriend got an iPad for Christmas from his mother. Well, that’s not quite true. His mother ordered one iPad, and had it shipped to him. What arrived on their doorstep was a very large and heavy box that was big enough to hold five iPads. Because it did. [More]
New York Times Accidentally Tells 8 Million Readers Their Subscriptions Are Canceled
By 12.29.11
Millions of people who had given their email addresses to The New York Times were incorrectly told Wednesday morning that they had canceled their subscriptions. The accidental email to 8 million readers caused confusion, leaving subscribers scrambling to see what was wrong with their accounts while befuddling those who didn’t subscribe. After initially declaring the email was a spam attack, the paper copped to the fact that an employee sent the email and apologized for the accident in a second mass email. [More]
Why Form 1040X Can Be Your Best Friend
By 4.17.11
If you’ve waited until the last possible moment to do your taxes, there’s probably a better chance that you’ll rush through the process and make an error. An error you’ll only realize you’ve made just after you’ve clicked on the e-file button or after the mailman has spirited your return off to Mount Doom. [More]
Levi's Not Terribly Concerned That They Sent You The Wrong Order
By 12.10.10
Francis tells Consumerist that his online order from Levi’s went slightly wrong. They sent him the wrong order. Simple enough: especially when the item was intended as a holiday gift, most retailers would immediately put a replacement order in the mail. Not Levi’s. Francis says that they were much more concerned with getting the other customer’s order back than with making sure that he received his original order in a timely fashion. Update: Francis’s situation was fixed even before we posted his story on the site. Hooray! [More]
"Rogue Trader" Gets 3 Years, $6.7B Fine
By 10.5.10
The “rogue trader” who cost his former employer, French bank Société Générale, $7.1 billion through a series of high-stakes bets that leveraged fictitious transactions outside his trading limit was sentenced today to 3 years in prison and a “symbolic” $6.7 billion fine. [More]
Best Buy Repairs Laptop With Fried Motherboard By Replacing Hard Drive, Removing Operating System
By 9.20.10
The Geek Squad service timeline for Stephen’s $1300 Asus laptop went something like this: ship it off for repairs, get it back in an even more broken state and missing all data, be forced to buy a $35 disk from Asus to prove to Best Buy that the problem is their responsibility, then finally find that something went missing during the first repair. Stephen eventually just asked for his money back on his ruined laptop, but the best he could get was store credit. [More]
Time Warner Changes Customer's Phone Number, Forgets To Mention It
By 9.20.10
If there’s one thing you can depend on with Time Warner Cable, it’s that if you call for technical support, someone is going to ask you to reboot your modem–even when the problem is that TWC changed your phone number without warning. [More]
This Dunkin' Donuts Employee Doesn't Run On Anything
By 9.14.10
I guess it’s not appropriate to force Dunkin’ Donuts employees to drink the coffee they sell, but they should at least show up to work with their short term memory intact. [More]
Watch For Mysterious Data Usage On Your iPhone
By 9.1.10
If you’re on one of AT&T’s limited data plans, you’d better start carefully monitoring the data usage, because some customers are noticing unexplainable daily hits on their accounts. The support forums at Apple are filled with pages of theories and complaints from frustrated customers, but our tipster David got the following admission directly from an AT&T rep: “She told me that most, if not all, 3g-capable iPhones were being charged erroneously like I had been experiencing. She told me AT&T was unaware of why the data was being charged, and where it was coming from.” [More]
CitiFinancial Auto Keeps Deducting Payment On Zero Balance Loan, Triggers Overdraft Fees
By 8.18.10
Marc’s monthly budget just exploded into a mess of overdraft fees thanks to CitiFinancial Auto’s negligence, and now he’s not sure how to get them to actually do anything to fix it. [More]
Krispy Kreme Accidentally Gives Customer $5,000 Box Of Donuts
By 8.9.10
The manager of a Krispy Kreme in North Carolina protected each day’s haul by hiding it in a donut box. Krispy Kreme just happens to sell donuts by the boxful to its customers, so it’s clear that absolutely nothing could go wrong with this plan. [More]
Gift Card Error In Your Favor: When Do You Tell The Hotel?
By 8.3.10
A reader emailed us to ask what he should do about an accounting mistake he discovered with some gift cards. He suspects the different parts of the hotel don’t update the card balance in real time, but it could also be that the hotel’s employees aren’t processing the card correctly. Now he’s wondering whether he should have said something. [More]
Hospital Confuses Survivor And Victim Of Traffic Accident, Tells Families Wrong News
By 7.27.10
St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Arizona mixed up the identities of two women involved in a car crash last week, says CNN, leading to some intensely unpleasant fake-outs for both families involved. [More]
Progressive Direct "Glitch" Hikes Premium From $800 to $2,000
By 7.14.10
Kevin received a surprise when he checked the renewal notice for his car insurance recently. A 260 percent surprise, in fact, even though he’s not a bad driver and hadn’t been in any accidents. [More]
This Kohl's T-Shirt Is A Great Bargain, If You Want To Introduce A New Stereotype
By 6.29.10
This “I’m Irish” tee from Kohl’s originally retailed for $20, but now you can get it for only two dollars. I’m definitly buying one. (Thanks to Dale!) [More]
Sorry, We Already Buried A Lady Next To Your Husband
By 6.7.10
The last place you want to find The Other Woman is on her back next to your husband. Especially when he’s dead. A woman named Lillas Hawkins in California found just that when she went to visit her husband’s grave two weeks ago. When she pointed out the error to a cemetery worker, she says he responded, “We are in terrible trouble.” The cemetery is owned by a company named Dignity. [More]
