A mother faces a $535 fine and possible jail time because her 11-year old daughter saved a baby woodpecker from the family cat. [More]
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Guy Files Class Action Against Hilton For Charging Him 75 Cents For Newspaper He Didn't Ask For
By 8.1.11
A man has decided to turn a minor annoyance, getting a newspaper at your hotel room door and getting charged for it, into a class action lawsuit. [More]
Elderly Couple Thought They Canceled The Insurance, End Up Overpaying Anthem $5,000
By 8.1.11
By the time the couple in their 80’s noticed the monthly auto-billing on their bank account, they had overpaid Anthem $5,000 for insurance they thought they had canceled two years ago. That’s money these two living on pension could have been using to fix their crumbling front walkway. It was until they beseeched their local consumer reporter and he took an interest in their story did Anthem retroactively cancel their policy and refund their money. [More]
Man Gets $8k Bill For A Million Gallons Of Water That Never Reached His House
By 7.29.11
When the water bill for $8,000 arrived, a New Jersey man quickly found out why his showers had been so weak over the past few months. It turns out that the pipes had burst in his yard, sending nearly a million gallons of water into the soil. He doesn’t think he should have to pay because when he called the water company to complain, they told him his pipes were probably just frozen and so he should just wait for warmer weather. “Like an idiot, I listened to them,” he told The Star Ledger. [More]
Should It Have To Be Disclosed If A Used Car Was Smoked In?
By 7.28.11
You get into the seats, place your hands on the wheel and sniff. That’s not new car smell you’re getting, but the faint notes of incinerated tobacco leaves. Perhaps they’re peaking out from a cloying cloud of freshener, like a bra strap from a tank top. Dangit. You thought you found a good contender and wasted all this time to come out and check the car out, and now it turns out someone used to smoke in it. Reader Ethan wonders if this isn’t something that dealers should have to disclose, or at least something that should show up on CarFax. [More]
Philly Utility Goes The Distance So Your Car Doesn't Blow Up
By 7.28.11
Claude has a cool story about how Philadelphia Gas Works went the extra mile to make sure his girlfriend’s car wouldn’t explode after a gas leak started nearby. [More]
Getting HIPAA Certificate Of Creditable Coverage Like Pulling Tooth From Dragon's Maw
By 7.28.11
Sarek tells the story of how he was able finally get a “certificate of creditable coverage” from his COBRA administrators. After many moons of pleas, what it finally took was writing a physical letter to the presidents of each four companies at the same time. At the top of the letter was the address of each of the other companies so that all knew that he was showing off their unsightly bits to the other. [More]
Complaint Contact Info For Most Major Companies
By 7.28.11
If you have a complaint and want to know where to put it, besides the place where the sun has not been seen for a while, the Federal government’s Consumer Action Handbook’s has an online address book to help point you in the right direction. [More]
Contractor Tears Siding Off Wrong House
By 7.27.11
An Iowa homeowner was surprised when he looked at his house and half the siding on it was gone, leaving an exposed underbelly of bare white plastic. No other nearby houses were affected. Had a highly localized tornado swept through and targeted just the side of his house? Nope. A local contractor got the address wrong and taken the siding off the wrong abode. The timing was pretty poor, too, as the homeowner had just put it up for sale. And because of insurance bureaucracy, it may be a while before the siding goes back up. [More]
Banzai Slide 'N Splash Whale Pool Box Vs. Reality
By 7.27.11
Three years after we first started pointing it out, Banzai continues to make kiddie pools that are disproportionately smaller than they appear on the box. The latest to enrage the internet is their “Slip ‘N Splash Whale Pool.” On the box it shows four children frolicking. In real life, those would have to be tiny munchkin children. [More]
Wells Fargo Denies Mortgage 1 Day Before Closing To 800 Credit Score Buyer With 20% Down
By 7.26.11
After years of anything goes loans-writing, the pendulum has swung far, far, in the other direction. Patrick tells the story of how his loan with Wells Fargo was denied, 1 day before he was set to close on a new condo. Even though he has an 800 credit score and was putting 20% down, this hiccup was enough to make Wells Fargo back up. And because of it, he and his five-month pregnant wife now have one week to find a new place to live. [More]
Fraudsters Already Exploiting Google+
By 7.26.11
It was inevitable. With the creation of Google+, a new social network already boasting over 20 million users, the scammers were sure to follow. Here’s a note a probable fraudster sent to reader Geoff through his Google+ profile, informing him that someone died in Africa and he needs to be contacted about a “business transaction” of “magnitude.” [More]
How A Wall Street Lobbyist Is "Reforming The Reform"
By 7.25.11
Banks are none too happy about how the passage of Dodd-Frank has been crimping their style. So they hired a Wall Street lobbyist, former Congressman Steve Bartlett, to lead the well-funded rearguard action by the ” Financial Services Roundtable” to neuter the laws. And darned if those cocktail parties aren’t working. [More]
Not Just Hair Dye: An Older Guy's Guide To Getting A Job
By 7.25.11
It’s not just a matter of putting on a few doses of “Touch of Gray.” John shares his strategies for getting a job as an older guy in the youth-obsessed technology field. While the last story we wrote about this focused on the power of personal connections to open doors, John makes sure that his resume is very nice and Google-friendly. [More]
Fighting For A Working HP Laptop For 8 Months
By 7.25.11
Try as they might, HP just seems to be incapable of getting David’s repair right. When repairing his wireless card that was damaged in a previous repair, they broke the motherboard. Fixing the motherboard, they broke the screen connector. And so on. Even the replacement computer they gave him started to fail, and then they failed at fixing that correctly. This ridiculous dance has been going on for 8 months. [More]
China Shuts Down Two Fake Apple stores
By 7.25.11
Chinese officials moved to shut down two detailed fake Apple stores in Kumnmig after a blogger’s post exposing the counterfeits went viral. [More]
Thieves Decide They Want Zipcars' Wheels Right Now
By 7.22.11
Looks like some thieves took Zipcar’s slogan, “Wheels when you want them,” too literally. [More]
Counterfeit World Of Warcraft Theme Park Opens In China
By 7.22.11
The Chinese may have been the first to invent gunpowder and delicious pork-filled fried dumplings, but they have not caught up to the rest of the world when it comes to respecting intellectual property rights. Case in point, the recent opening of an entire themepark dedicated to World of Warcraft and Starcraft, two of the most popular online games in the world, in the Changzhou, Jiangsu province. It’s a sprawling $30 million megaplex spanning 600,000 square meters that aspires to compete with Disney and Universal Studios as a global theme park destination. And it’s a total knockoff. They didn’t pay Blizzard, the company behind those two games, a dime. [More]
