For six months now, union workers for Charter in New York and New Jersey have been on strike. Now the cable company has filed a lawsuit against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, accusing union members of sabotaging customers’ cable installations to make Charter look bad. [More]
new jersey
Two Police Officers Deliver Babies At Same Burger King One Day Apart
By 9.12.17
When a baby is ready to grace this world with its presence, it’s ready — even at a Burger King. At least that was the case last week for not one, but two babies born two days in a row in the parking lot of a New Jersey restaurant.
[More]
Woman Looking At Phone Trips Over Door On Sidewalk, Falls Into Utility Room
By 6.9.17 — Updated: 6.11.17
The hazards of distracted driving are well known, but inability to put down one’s mobile phone poses a danger to other forms of transportation, too. Just ask the 67-year-old woman in New Jersey who was walking while looking at her phone, and tumbled into a building’s basement when she didn’t see access doors that were open on the sidewalk. [More]
A Weird Way To Celebrate Halloween: Nabbing Gas From NJ Before Prices Go Up
By 11.1.16
A $0.23 tax hike per gallon of gasoline is finally happening in New Jersey today, and that meant a weird form of adult trick-or-treating took place last night: people from other states — okay, pretty much just New York — rushed over the border to get their last cheap fill-up before the higher tax went into effect. [More]
Contractors Charged With Using Money From Hurricane Sandy Victims To Shop And Gamble
By 10.12.16 — Updated: 10.13.16
Here’s a nightmare scenario: your house is severely damaged in a rare storm, and you hire a legitimate-seeming contractor to repair it or to raise your house on stilts to prevent flooding the next time a storm comes. Instead, the contractor either never began the work or wandered off partway through, leaving you without the money or a livable house. That’s what the state of New Jersey has accused a duo of contractors who are also a couple of doing. [More]
NJ Regulators: Verizon Landline Service Has “Systemic Problems,” Fixes Are “Haphazard”
By 10.3.16
The state of Verizon landline service in New Jersey has been a sordid saga for several years now, with customers and mayors repeatedly claiming that the telecom behemoth is neglecting their needs. The latest act in this messy play now sees one state regulator all but begging another to do something already about the way Verizon leaves customers hanging with crappy service. [More]
New Jersey Walmart Wants You To Get Exercise By Parking Further Away
By 9.26.16
We’ve all been there: driving up and down the lanes of the local big box store’s parking lot seeking out the closest spot to the entrance. Now one Walmart store wants you to stop that, you know, in the name of being healthy. [More]
New Jersey Customers Complain To Utility Board For Hours About Crappy Verizon Service
By 8.5.16
In recent years, the relationship between Verizon and its legacy, copper-wire, landline-using customers in New Jersey has gotten… well, let’s politely call it “contentious.” Residents of the Garden State and the descendant of Ma Bell have found themselves at odds over everything from pricing to fiber rollout to disintegrating connections. So when the state gave those customers a chance to come out and have their say, well, they said a lot. [More]
NJ Student Loan Agency Tells Staff To Only Offer Help When Explicitly Asked
By 7.28.16
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that your cable company has perks or discounts it will only reveal when asked, but you’d hope a government agency wouldn’t deliberately hide a program intended to help families struggling to pay off student loan debts of a deceased loved one. [More]
New Jersey Investigating Comcast’s Use Of HD Fee To Raise Basic Cable Rates
By 5.25.16
As we recently showed in our line-by-line breakdowns of cable and satellite bills, Comcast and other pay-TV providers are using a variety of fees to effectively raise customers’ rates without actually increasing the advertised price. Now comes news that New Jersey utility regulators are looking into Comcast’s use of one particular fee on the company’s most basic tier of TV service. [More]
$5M Credit Card Skimming Scheme Nets Man Seven Years In Jail
By 5.4.16
A high-ranking member of the largest card-skimming operation in the U.S. will spend the next seven years in prison for his part in a scheme that used ATMs at several national banks to steal $5 million from credit card accounts.
Overheated iPhone Burns Through 12 Pages Of Notebook Paper
By 5.4.16
Mobile phones are our constant companions, yet it’s easy to forget that they’re electronic devices packed full of delicate components and tiny but powerful rechargeable batteries. The Cherry Hill, NJ fire department says that this resident’s iPhone 6 overheated and burned through 12 pages of a notebook. [More]
Bag Of Money Falls Out Of Armored Truck, Scatters Across Highway
By 3.17.16
What would you do if you saw cash fluttering from an armored vehicle while driving down the highway? What you are not supposed to do is scoop up handfuls of money and then drive off. Yet that’s what usually happens, because people are terrible and greedy. It’s what happened in New Jersey this morning. [More]
YES Network Tells Yankee Fans To “Drop Comcast”
By 3.9.16
A spat between the nation’s largest cable company and Major League Baseball’s most storied franchise is getting ugly, with the New York Yankees’ YES Network launching a campaign urging fans to “Drop Comcast.” [More]
Horrible Taco Bell Customer Tosses Drink In Employee’s Face; Doesn’t Realize Drive-Thru Has Cameras
By 3.8.16
What sort of childhood trauma brings one to the point of deciding to throw a drink in the face of a fast food worker? More importantly, what sort of person does this today and doesn’t think they will be photographed from multiple angles? [More]
Companies Move Back To Cities, Abandon Suburban Office Parks
By 2.8.16
How many likely tenants are there for a concrete suburban office complex of 470,000 square feet? The owners of office complexes are having similar problems to the owners of malls, but for different reasons. As shoppers have moved either to ritzier malls or to shipping online, offices have moved back into cities. Both changes leave behind massive buildings or complexes that nobody wants. [More]
At Least 16 NJ Towns Left With Failing Phone Service While Verizon Dithers On Repairing Copper Wires
By 1.7.16
Verizon has made it very clear that they have no interest in maintaining or upgrading their aging, legacy copper-wire networks. If they were replacing them all with fiber that would be one thing, but according to residents and officials in at least 16 New Jersey towns, that’s not what’s happening. Instead, municipalities are just seeing their entire communications infrastructure left to rot, to the point where you can’t even make a phone call on a rainy day. [More]
Uber, New Jersey Town Partner To Offer Residents Free Rides After A Night On The Town
By 10.26.15
Since its launch, Uber has had a somewhat contentious relationship with cities and municipalities over the legality of its services. But in an interesting turn of events, the ride-hailing app is actually partnering with one town, offering free rides for citizens that may have had a few too many adult beverages. [More]
