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Later this month, Sony will start selling a $199 ebook reader through Walmart and other retailers ($100 less than the Kindle). They’re also dropping the price of new releases to $9.99, which is what Amazon sells ebook licenses for. [Consumer Reports]
Daniel filled out a Washington Mutual deposit slip listing several checks and $500 in cash, but “forgot” to hand over the cash. He normally isn’t a fan of “shady business,” but now that he has a bank statement crediting him for the $500 hiding in his wallet, he’s suddenly not sure what to do…
When Fosters-owned Cascade beer (different from regular Fosters in that it tastes decent) switched to 330ml from 375ml while charging the same price, consumers let their discontent be known in a highly visible fashion: they stopped buying it. Fosters reported a 33% drop in sales and some retailers reported up to a 50% drop. In response to the steep drop-off, Fosters is going back to 375ml, the standard size for canned beers in Australia.
Here are five special photos that readers added to The Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, chosen because they’re both neat and could possibly be used in a Consumerist post. Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers go and upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right, and start hitting “send to group” on your individual photos you want to add to the pool.
An anonymous tipster wrote to us about how Chipotle, known for their delicious, healthy burritos, handled a Hepatitis A outbreak at his neighborhood store. This might be the one case of a corporation giving you something for free, and it not making the situation any better. Read his letter, inside.
How hard should you have to work to pay your bills? No, not to make enough money to pay your bills, but to actually give your money to someone else? Reader Matt has been trying to convince Capital One to take his money for several months now. They’re not taking his money, or his calls, but they are willing to send him to collections! Check out his story, inside.
Reader Dan writes in to tell us that the incense peddlers over at Keyherb.com are too chill to do business. All he wanted to do was de-stress with some of their lovely, organic aromatherapy products, but instead of shipping his order, they sent him a fake tracking number then ignored him.
The other day we woke up to find that a story we’d accidentally “shared” on Google Reader was now being automatically broadcast to a wide swath of strangers who were listed in our Gmail contacts and had been “auto- added” to Google Talk . It was startling, but no big deal because we didn’t use the “share” feature on Google Reader and therefore had only to delete the single “United Airlines does something boring that no one actually cares about” AP story that we’d accidentally clicked sometime last year.
Forgive me, I’m a bit emotional over this. I’m raging mad and sad and disappointed because today Wells Fargo just lost my business. Yeah, I screwed up in this, but I’m a poor college student, and I thought I fixed it before it was a problem…
TigerDirect.com sold Chudacek a 2GB flash drive for $1.99, without warning that after thirty days, the price would skyrocket to an astounding $171.38. Included with the drive “[for] a limited-time only [the] opportunity to try [CA] Internet Security Suite 2007.” We have warned against rebates, but even we were caught off-guard by the note on TigerDirect’s packing slip. Limited-time, indeed.
At $2 (after rebates) for 2 GB, I thought it was a deal I couldn’t refuse. I would just format the flash drive to get rid of the pre-loaded software and I’d be in good shape.
Over at TGForumz, rdguerrero writes that Dell replaced his computer’s x6800 processor with an extreme edition 955. That sounds about 7.12 times worse.
My dell computer has been giving trouble form the day i got it. finally they replaced the motherboard and processor however instead of replacing my x6800 they gave me a pentium extreme edition 955. the guy from Dell says this is an upgrade i think he id trying to pass off something on me which chip is better.
His hunch is right. One comparison declares, “Even the X6800 Core 2 Extreme which is clocked at just 2.93GHz is able to kill the 955 Extreme Edition processor pretty much all of the time.” Rdguerrero, taking the sage of advice of forum members calling bs, had a nice little chat with Dell.
The service rep has informed me that he has started the Exchange process and i will be informed by e-mail of updates, but should take approximately 19 labor days for the system to arrive.
19 days? Oh, Dell. Is there anything you can’t bumble? — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER
I made sure she knew they were buy one get one free. She told me the total was $43.xx. I was like, they’re buy one get one free. She told me that the discount was split between the two, then the tax. Being almost late for work with a line behind me I didn’t feel like starting a fight.
Marc’s top-of-the-line DeLonghi Combination Coffee/Espresso Machine was felled by a five-cent piece of plastic. Marc called DeLonghi for a replacement part, but was directed to their accessories website.
Until Aug 11, 2006 my cell phone’s antenna housing cracked. So I called “Signal” and after spending 20 minutes describing how the phone broke, I was told that I had no insurance. So I called customer care “611”, and had a rep. help me out. He did a in house exchange because he said that I had signed the paper work but the plan was not added. He also told me that there would be a prepaid return box sent to me, and I could just send my broke phone back.
Dude, you’re getting a shock. An electric shock. If you have a Dell 9400, e1705, m1710, m90, or 6400, and a two-pronged power adapter, Dell has a special hidden feature just for you:
TampaForums member Treysdad received a $7,243.29 bill after subscribing to numerous third-party text packages. By purchasing an unlimited text message plan from Nextel, Treysdad thought he could receive any texts for free.
Magsforless.com and My1mag.com are really crappy. Don’t buy magazines from them. They claim to use the power of bulk purchases to negotiate special rates. The reality is magazines never arriving, completely unresponsive customer service, and ruminating observers of human behavior everywhere bereft of their New Yorkers.
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